Pain Points
Pain points are the problems, challenges, and unmet needs that customers experience in their context.
Great products address unmet needs. They delight people. They surprise us with how well they just work. The only way to design products like this is to listen to your users and actively listen for their pain points.
How do you discover pain points?
Pain points are discovered through engaging with customers—through interviews, observations, and generative research. Every day you learn more about customers, their needs, and their pain points. You frame these needs as opportunities and capture them on your opportunity solution tree.
Product managers actively listen for pain points during customer interviews to identify opportunities worth addressing. But what matters most is how your customers frame their own problems, not how you think about them.
Why do pain points matter?
When you spend time talking with customers, understanding needs, observing challenges, and uncovering pain points, you gain the context to know whether or not you're making good product decisions.
Pain points are one type of opportunity (along with desires and wants) that teams discover through generative research and frame on their opportunity solution trees. Addressing customer pain points that drive desired business outcomes is how teams reconcile the tension between business needs and customer needs.
Learn more:
- Customer Interviews: How to Recruit, What to Ask, and How to Synthesize What You Learn
Related terms:
- Opportunity Space
- Customer Needs
- Generative Research
- Opportunity Solution Tree
Last Updated: October 25, 2025