Marketer, hear thyself

Webster announced a bunch of new words for 2019. I always love these. I like new words. I like that English is flexible and fluid. Once in awhile I take umbrage... the use of "literally" to literally mean figuratively, for example. But mostly I'm glad to see new words. As a writer, it gives me more ammo.

One of the new terms mentioned in the Fast Company article linked above, though, gives me pause:

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

I hear and read this a bunch. And it's not that it bothers me a lot. As far as marketing and corporate-speak goes, it's pretty mild. It certainly doesn't make me itch as much as "ideation" or "incentivize," both of which have perfectly wonderful, 100% synonyms that work very happily in almost any situation (thinking; encourage).

But as I was reading the list of new words, I had this small epiphany (or, perhaps, "realization," Mr. Smarty Pants):

This is not a word I would ever use about myself.

I would never call up the gas company and say, "I have a pain point about this month's billing statement." I wouldn't go to the service desk at Target and describe the paint point about the vacuum cleaner I was returning. Nor would I talk to my SaaS rep about the pain point I was encountering in trying to add new user permissions to the service.

I would just say, "I have a problem."

Is there a significant difference (or "delta?" heh-heh-heh) between a "pain point" and a "problem?" I can't think of one. I think it ends up being a distancing term. One of these "magical language" things that we do to separate us -- the people causing the problem -- from our customers -- the people on the pointy end of the problem stick.

It's up there with using passive voice for things like this. When we say:

"Some customers seem to be experiencing this particular step in the buying journey as a pain point."

It lets us off the hook a bit more than:

"We are pissing people off and creating problems when we make people fill out the same form three times before letting them check out."

Let's listen to ourselves more and try to talk like people rather than processes.