sethdford Pain Point Analysis
Catalog and rank customer pain points by frequency, intensity, and business impact to guide prioritization.
Context
You are analyzing customer pain to inform product priorities. If you have interview notes, support tickets, or user feedback, use them. Your goal is a systematically ranked list of addressable pain.
Domain Context
- Pain vs. desired outcome: Focus on friction, not features
- Frequency × intensity: A rare acute pain vs. daily chronic friction
- Jobs-to-be-Done: Pains that block or slow a job-to-be-done
- Willingness to pay: Acute pains command premium pricing
Instructions
- List all pain points from customer research
- Categorize: Functional (task friction), emotional (frustration), social (perception)
- Score each: Frequency (1-5), Intensity (1-5), % of segment affected
- Assess addressability: Can we realistically solve this?
- Estimate impact: Revenue, churn, NPS impact if solved
- Identify dependencies: Which pains must we solve first?
Output Artifact
Pain point analysis (2-3 pages):
- Ranked list of pains (frequency × intensity × reach)
- Supporting quotes from customers
- Addressability assessment per pain
- Business impact if solved
- Recommended priority order
Anti-Patterns
- Assuming pain exists: vs. demonstrating in interviews
- Treating all pains equally: Not ranking by impact and frequency
- Solving the symptom, not the root: "Users want bulk actions" vs. "Users waste 2h/week on repetitive tasks"
- Missing adjacent pains: Solving one pain but ignoring related friction
Further Reading
- Continuous Discovery Habits (Teresa Torres) — pain discovery
- Jobs to Be Done (Clayton Christensen) — job friction
- The Lean Product Playbook (Dan Olsen) — problem validation