pain point

noun

plural pain points

: a persistent or recurring problem (as with a product or service) that frequently inconveniences or annoys customers

When you're in an established market, you have an established customer; their needs and pain points are clearly laid out on your competitors' review sites.

—Billy Polson

Customer service, which has been a pain point of bigger banks for years, is also improving in that it's getting faster and requires little from you.

—Chris Welch

broadly : something that is a recurring source of trouble, annoyance, or distress

One generation's parenting gospel often becomes another's pain point.

—Lynda Lin Grigsby

Meanwhile, ironing is a pain point with her boyfriend because she loves the look of a crisply pressed men's shirt. "He never irons his shirts and it drives me crazy," she [Elyse Moody] says.

—Jura Konicus

Examples of pain point in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

But there are pain points like capital investment and infrastructure, too. — Lucy Maguire, Vogue, 29 Oct. 2026

The issue of public safety has emerged as perhaps the biggest pain point for the mayor in his first ten months in office. — Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News, 27 Oct. 2026

This new panel technology addresses common pain points that affected previous OLED panels, such as low brightness, blurry text, and lackluster black-level performance under high ambient light. — Zackery Cuevas, PC Magazine, 25 Oct. 2026

If a rival is consistently associated with a particular pain point while your company has strength in that area, that insight can inform competitive demand programs without turning the campaign into an attack. — Lora Kratchounova, Forbes.com, 13 Oct. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1986, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for pain point

• adjoint
• anoint
• appoint
• checkpoint
• conjoint
• disjoint
• endpoint
• gunpoint
• midpoint
• nonpoint
• pinpoint
• standpoint