Pain vs. Pleasure in Product Decisions

Why do you care about their pain? Because retaining current customers is far less expensive than acquiring new ones.

Picture a new entrant in the market. Their pitch to a slice of your users might be “We don’t have all the features of your current product, but we’re half the price and you know those four hours a week you spend rearranging data in Excel? That disappears.” As someone who’s spent quality time rearranging data because of limited import/export options, that utterly un-sexy enhancement sounds like bliss.

Also, while some pain points may involve a major product change, others may have a tiny remedy. Three product irritations I’ve dealt with just this morning:

• My toothbrush, which tends to roll to the side when I put toothpaste on it. I’m tempted to grind a section of the handle flat myself so I can stop wiping toothpaste off my counter.
• Two spiral notebooks, one which allows me to slip a pen in the wire coil, and one which makes me juggle the pen in every event without a table. It’s irksome enough I comparison shop every time I need to order more.
• iCloud photo, where I had to scroll past 908 images to get to this post’s groundbreaking image. They already group by date, why not let me set a range?

Sounds silly, right? Things you’d never brag about on a press release, things nobody would report to a customer service line, but they remove a little friction in a customer’s day. I’m still thankful my credit union revised their app’s login screen so the second field and button are no longer covered by my phone keyboard.

What can you tweak today?