Yes, Modern Tech Fails are Making You Crazy, Here’s Why

This happened to you recently, I’m sure. You tried to do something simple, but a tech-fail left you misinformed, stuck, or even stranded. What is going on here, and why does it seem to be getting worse?

Indeed, from crashed coffee machines to the 2024 CrowdStrike Breakdown, technology failures are causing small and large disasters alike. And they’re a growing strain on daily life.

The key issue lurks beyond the headlines: the countless tiny tech fails we experience every day. While absent from the news, they now number in the billions each day.

These often stack on top of each other like a falling house of cards, as happened to me last month while travelling.

Day One, No Cash: “Sorry, the bank is offline for maintenance tonight, try again tomorrow.” came the message. Grr.

Day Two, No Car: I’m flying into New York City, and my car rental app shows my vehicle ready. But it wasn’t true. Fifty-some other travellers and I were stuck.

Day Three, No Email: A technical error stopped email from working on my phone. Hmm maybe this is a sign to go back home.

While we can and should laugh these incidents off, the quantity of these tiny tech fails is now at harmful levels. This is harmful for our psychology and overall well-being, as I’ll share with you below.

Today I’ll explain why these hidden problems are causing more damage than we think, and how we can fix them.

Quick History Review: Modern Tech is Pretty Cool

Much of the time, tech is great. It benefits our daily lives immensely.

In the old days of the tech-free lifestyle, we needed the productive outputs our manual labor every day. This included work for farming, shelter, and clothing.

Achieving these essentials took up most of people’s active energy. So prior to industrial and modern tech, only a small number of communities around the world enjoyed a good life.

Now, we have tech to take care of many difficult tasks. This gives us the opportunity to explore life and enjoy many things.

Then in 2007, we got the smartphone.

Modern Technology Fails Have Reached Dangerous Levels in 2024

After 2000-plus years of high-tech development, we don’t really need more tech for a good life. Actually, we are over-saturated with too much tech. This is because:

In its present form, the effects of tech-fail are harming all modern humans.

If tech-fail incidents were rare or infrequent, it wouldn’t matter. All of us are capable of handling something unexpected from time to time.

But when unexpected problems happen frequently, they harm our mental and physical well-being.

A small nuisance, repeated often, becomes torture: Our brains and bodies aren’t built to handle the constant pattern interrupt caused by tiny tech fails.

It’s death by a thousand cuts.

Like Sugar, We Enjoy Some Positive Stress and Newness

I think you’ll agree, a certain level of positive stress and newness is good for us. We actually need this to feel in balance.

But I believe it’s important to remember, when stressful events happen too often, or too randomly, our brain and body react negatively. In fact, our biology perceives this as a form of abuse.

It comes down to a funny thing: we humans are strong, and also sensitive animals. You and me need a sweet spot of “sameness” and predictability in our life, combined with a modicum of “newness”, stress, and excitement.

The careful application of sameness and newness are used successfully in business, marketing, and sales. For you to buy a new car, it needs to be familiar enough, but still have enough newness to it. When you visit a new restaurant, it needs a comfortable aspect of sameness to it, while offering enough newness for you to try it.

Of course the ideal balance of sameness and newness varies with each person, based on your personality type, disposition, and current mood (don’t talk to me before my morning coffee).

Balance of sameness and newness is the key.

When does sameness and newness go out of balance? When we are too-often stressed in an unpredictable matter, our mind and body experience a form of torture, which I call tech-torture.

We know it all too well, because this type of abuse has been used against prisoners for centuries. These include:

1. False Information: Makes the prisoner doubt their own memory and perception.

2. Inconsistent Rules: To make the prisoner feel powerless.

3. Emotional Manipulation: Makes prisoners unsure of what to expect and whom to trust.

4. Withholding Key Information: So they question their own sanity and reality.

5. Contradictory Statements: Leads to self-doubt and a sense of instability.

These methods are designed to disorient and break down a person’s mental stability.

Have We Become Prisoners Trapped by Failed Tech?

Let’s update the above list with some slight changes:

1. False Information: The app intermittently gives false information. Eventually, this makes the customer less confident.

2. Inconsistent Rules: The social media site enforces the rules inconsistently. This pattern causes stress and confusion.

3. Emotional Influence: Young people are overcome by social media use. Feelings of anxiety are increased, and self-confidence is decreased.

4. Withholding Information: Customers are kept in the dark about important changes. You sometimes lose something important, with no one to speak with, and little chance of getting help.

5. Contradictory Statements: Support makes contradictory statements about a problem. This leads to a sense of instability.

Sound familiar? The combined effects of these can make it seem like we are tech prisoners, trapped by failed tech.

Now let’s dive into why and how we can fix this.

Why It’s Worth Tackling Tiny Tech Fails in Your Business

Tech-fail starts as an under-the-radar problem, and festers for many years.

It falls into two categories: headline cases and subtle cases, which I call tiny tech fails (TTF). Both are worth solving.

In headline cases, a tragic tech-fail accident results in near-disaster or even death. News bounces around the world, and trust in the company is broken.

More frequent and costly are the billions of tiny tech fails every day. These cause measurable damage to worldwide well-being, productivity, and economic output.

Tech fail results in financial losses to your company, as customers slowly disappear: Tech fail means lost business.

What Happens When Technology Fails

Tiny tech fails hurt your business and profits. This is because they drive away your customers.

Customers tolerate minor errors, only at first. But over time, tech-fails become a nuisance. The customer might even reach out to your support team, to no avail.

When technology fails, the customer gets the impression that no one cares. Finally, they seek a new solution, and quietly disappear.

This customer loss is visible in many KPI numbers: higher customer churn rate, lower customer lifetime value (CLV), higher customer acquisition cost (CAC), and a lower net promoter score (NPS).

This all means less profit for your business as a whole, so it’s worth fixing. Even better, the ROI to fix this will pay for itself in a few months.

And this is valid for both major categories of products that your business works with: products which you produce, and products which you purchase.

So I recommend to talk with your vendors when any products you buy from them are having tech fail issues. And be proactive to prevent such issues in the products you sell.

Fighting Failed Technology to Win Customers, Clients, and Trust

You’ve made it here, so you may already agree: This is worth fixing. So what should we do? Let’s group the solutions into three areas.

Anti Tech-Fail Management Vision

Quality products and services require senior management commitment. We need our management team all-in to secure:

• A belief in quality, with a vision to match
• Operational investment in quality improvement
• Marketing and sales communications of your commitment to quality (the public promise)

Yes it requires some investment. Yet this investment will be recouped over time and leads to improved profits in the long term.

Consider a portion of the product development budget, around 10% to 20% as a guideline, for investment in testing, quality control, and quality improvement.

I’ve seen that when well-implemented, return on investment can start showing up in as little as six months. If you have longer product and service development lifecycles, the ROI may take two or three years to start appearing.

Once your actions and your quality are visible to your customers, you will see:

• Higher customer retention rate and higher customer lifetime value (CLV)
• More positive word of mouth (NPS)
• Lower customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Fewer returns and fewer complaints
• Better margins and profits
• Improved employee satisfaction, reduced employee churn, and ease of hiring
• Positive social media reputation and customer trust
• Reduced legal risk and liability
• Better long-term growth
• Stronger brand reputation and investor trust

How Quality Products Affect Product and Marketing

Building it is not enough. Once your quality strategy is implemented, it’s time to tell the world and build your fan base.

Here we run into a common business gap: people who are great at engineering products, or great at managing a business, aren’t necessarily good at communicating with the public.

Marketing and sales are very different domains of skill, personality, and experience, as compared with management or engineering.

So just like you invest in quality people for product development and business management, I suggest to make sure that your sales and marketing teams are led by domain experts, and they have the external resources they need to succeed.

Again, take a look at your sales staff budget and marketing investment, as a percentage of company revenue. Compare these against data in your industry sector. If you need some numbers on this, just drop me a note.

Support Your Customers Against Tech-Fail

The front-lines of quality are not only your product, marketing and sales teams, but your customer service and support staff. They translate your management vision for quality into daily operations.

This lets customers know that:

• Your company practices its vision for quality with real actions
• Clients can reach out when they have a problem
• You proactively communicate and check-in with customers

Do these, and you’ll be surprised at the positive transformation it provides for your business.

How to Win Against Tech-Fail: Talk With Someone Who Knows

To solve this in your company, I could share a mountain of analysis with you.

Yet there’s something even more powerful, which I learned many years ago: When I ask for help from the right people, it’s possible to achieve almost anything. So I suggest to speak with someone who knows the problem and solution, so you can see results quickly.

Whether you’re evaluating your current situation or want a solid strategy for improving revenue, reach out to me and request a call.

Together we can deliver both an effective action plan and bottom line results for your entire company.

Speak with you soon.

Christian Pyrros

Managing Director

erfolk.com

Footnotes:

1. Many people are living in terrible conditions today. Much has been accomplished and much work remains to be done.

2. There are many different ways to categorize and define abuse.

3. Abuse and torture are inhumane and a violation of human rights.

4. Tech fail is worth fixing because it contributes to terrible mental health in the modern world.

5. Overall, I do believe that life is good. And we keep making it better by staying proactive.