A Day of Shitty UX (and Nobody Cares)

My alarm goes off in my phone app. The “dismiss” screen isn’t there like it usually is. The song is playing, and I have to unlock my phone, find the alarm app, open it, and press “dismiss.” OK, I’m awake.

I have a Signal message from one of my best friends. He read my latest Patreon post that had a link to my music YouTube account that I’m starting, and he wanted me to know the link was wrong. Yep, typo. What did I do wrong?

YouTube links require an @ sign. YouTube.com/@VocalCoachDebbie Without the @ sign, you get page not found. You’d think that years into YouTube inexplicably using @ that they would also make accounts found without the @ given how often that’s probably excluded. But no, page not found.

A client from many years ago emailed to ask if I’m still in biz, and can we help fix her website. Sure! I forgot what we billed her, so I tried to log into Square, which I haven’t used in years. I wanted to text a code to my phone. Sure, go ahead. It never came in after multiple tries. OK, I can’t log in, and will just charge her what I think was our rate.

Square tried to call me at the same number to read me the code, but Google Voice doesn’t want to ring on my phone anymore. No matter what I change in settings, my phone doesn’t even ring.

I’ve already planned the fix for that. I had Claude Sonnet code me an Android app that links to my Twilio accounts, and does basic VoIP texting and calling functions. It works! I will eventually port my numbers over and be off Google Voice. It’ll cost me more but hey, it’ll work.

The client who uses SAP Ariba for vendors claims the payment to me is finally on the way. It took us 5 weeks to wrangle SAP problems, which means I have to charge them double next time. I spent more time in SAP than I spent on their project! But nobody will confirm which bank account they’re paying, and I can’t find that info in the system. They made me use my old old Ariba account from 15 years ago. Who knows which bank account is in there.

I have a Maven cohort running right now and it has to be the last. I endlessly hate them. Their system is awful, and they only promote popular and successful people. If you’re unknown, their site is fine-tuned to keep you that way. Their system is attributing people I brought to my course as Maven having brought them so you’ll think that you need them. I told support that was false, and they weren’t sure how to explain the lies.

But worse is that they create a Slack-style community for each of your courses or workshops, but they don’t notify you if anybody posted anything. Someone posted their goal and you should respond? You have no idea. Someone asked for help? No clue. Someone submitted their coursework? Go refresh the page all day long and see if anything is there.

I refreshed to find that someone wrote something 30 hours ago. I don’t look like a very attentive instructor. But I had no idea the post was there, and I can’t refresh obsessively just in case.

And it’s only 12:30pm.

We must be better.

Congrats. You’re fast. You’re shipping. You write code. AI writes code. But is any of this any good? Are customers happy? Are they staying and paying?

We know what bad UX looks and feels like. We experience it many times a day. Sometimes we’ve become numb and used to how bad everything is. We say it’s enshittified, and we move on, but we shouldn’t move on.

When everybody is “fast” and everybody is using AI for everything they can, what is your value prop? How will you compete? Why should companies choose you over competitors, using their Claude account, or vibe coding their own solution?

How many of the above systems can I replace with competitors or my own thing? Most of them? All of them?

What will it take for your company to care about experiences? You say you care about outcomes. Do you? Customer outcomes? Or just stock price?

It’s The Levitt Loop. The more careful we are with our spending, they more we will want high quality things that are worth what we’re paying. The more we’ll shift away from crap. Are customers starting to shift away from you? If you’re not sure, check your support tickets. Check complaints. Check threats to downgrade or leave. Take them seriously.

When everybody is fast, you’ll have to compete on quality and value. You can care about those now and start building that early. Or you can try to sprinkle on some sort of pseudo-quality when it’s probably too late. Your company gets to choose its future.

I’m Debbie, The Mary Poppins ☂️ of CX and PMF. I consult, train, write, research, and solve problems related to customer satisfaction, product and service strategy, conversion, retention, growth, and PMF. What “why” can I research and solve for you? https://DeltaCX.com

YouTube account not found because I forgot the @ sign, which no other platform uses in the URL.