Pretty Pixels Can’t Save an Ugly Company

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I’m about to tell you something that not enough people do, customer experience is a big part of your company’s user experience. When people hear user experience they think design.

“Make that shit pretty and we’ll go from there.”

“Shut up and design and make them want to buy!”

Good design is all fine and dandy.

Yea, people see the visuals of a company’s products and services, but they fail to dig deeper.

Remember the Wizard of Oz?

They thought it was a big bad motherfucker until the curtain opened.

It was a meek motherfucker from Kansas with a bunch of theatrics.

Is that what your company is? Is that what you want it to be?

Would I want that? Hell, no.

Working on your customer service is a way to keep that from happening. Your CS or CX team keeps the machine going so customers won’t go digging into your company and pulling the curtain back.

Here’s the crazy part, I did some digging around and found out that over 60% of people stop dealing with companies with bad customer experience. That adds to bad user experience.

And companies lose money that way.

Take care of your CX team and make sure you include them in your next user experience meeting.

Ready to talk user experience? Email Me.

How Eshu Helps Me See What’s Broken

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Being able to see both sides like the Orisha Eshu—is the only way to stay sane in this business.

Let me break it down.

Folks like to write Eshu off as a trickster. Don’t let that lazy narrative fool you. It’s a lesson in perspective.

Picture Eshu walking the crossroads of a village. He’s wearing a robe—red on one side, black on the other. The sun is beating down like hellfire, so he takes a sip from his gourd and listens.

Two farmers are working on opposite sides of the road. Best friends since the sandbox.

The farmer on the right looks up and yells, “Look at the guy in the red robe standing in the heat.”

The farmer on the left squints from under his hat. “Nah, you’re tripping. He’s wearing all black.”

Eshu just smirks and keeps walking.

The friends start yapping.
 “You’re crazy.”
“You’re drunk.”

Suddenly, it’s not about the robe anymore. It’s personal. Tools get dropped, fists go up, and they’re rolling around in the dirt, trying to knock the sense into each other.

Eshu steps in before they kill each other. “Enough. You’re both right, and you’re both blind.”

He turns slowly.

The men finally see the other side of the robe. The silence is loud. They realize they were ready to bleed over half a truth.

I look at AI the exact same way.

There’s the view from the inside and the view from the outside. Until you’ve walked down the middle of the road, you don’t know how the machine actually works.

I’ve seen the same mess in Media and Insurance.

Here is the reality: These systems aren’t gods. They’re tools. They are fragile, they are flawed, and they will continue to break.

Stop picking a side and open your eyes to the whole fractured picture.