Summary: This post tackles a specific kind of communication failure that’s becoming increasingly common in tech platforms and SaaS systems: the raw, unpolished, and often completely unhelpful error message. We’ll explore what happens when a message like “This text does not contain a story to be extracted and rewritten. It appears to be an error message from an API or web service, indicating that the account balance is insufficient to run the requested query…” lands in front of a confused user. There’s no emotion, no guidance, and certainly no empathy. Just a cold, technical rejection. And it’s hurting businesses more than they think.
The Problem Isn’t the Error — It’s the Delivery
Plenty of services implement error messaging. That’s normal. Resources get exceeded, tokens run out, quotas max out. But when the system responds with a blunt, generic dead end, it’s not just poor customer service—it quietly chips away at trust. A cold brush-off keeps users guessing: “Did I do something wrong? Is the system broken? What happens next?”
What do users walk away with here? Confusion, frustration, or worse—embarrassment caused by asking their team why the report didn’t load. Multiply that across thousands of business users, and what you have isn’t a simple problem. You’ve corrupted what should be a moment of engagement—an opportunity to show your brand values and invite resolution—and turned it into a dead stop. That’s not a minor loss. It’s a broken promise.
Message Clarity Isn’t Optional—It’s Operational
Let’s break the original example down: “This text does not contain a story to be extracted and rewritten.” What does that even mean for the user? Any value here gets buried beneath robotic phrasing. It implies the user may have asked for the wrong thing—yet fails to say what they should have done instead. Then the second part arrives: “…indicating that the account balance is insufficient to run the requested query.” Okay—now we start seeing the real reason. Finally comes the instruction: “…user needs to recharge the account.”
Three things are lacking: clear ownership, readable language, and a forward direction. That’s not just a writing problem—it’s a business operations failure. Support gets overloaded. Users open tickets that shouldn’t exist. Worst of all, potential conversions drop. All because we didn’t bother to explain things like humans.
Plain Language Strengthens Conversion—and Loyalty
Crisp error messages aren’t fluff. They’re performance assets. Good ones boil technical chaos down to simple human truths: What happened? Why did it happen? What do I do next?
Using clear, empathy-driven logic not only underlines your professionalism—it turns a transactional wall into a collaborative touchpoint. It’s an uncelebrated part of UX design that lives deep in backend operations, billing notifications, and startup failures. Ignoring it means you’re also missing trust-building micro-moments that compound over the customer lifecycle.
If the user isn’t at fault, say so. If they are, explain that without blame. In both cases, offer a path forward. That strengthens outcomes, reduces support costs, and reaffirms you’re paying attention. What would it take for your system to ask: “Would you like to top up now to continue?” instead of just shutting the door?
Empathy Can Be Engineered—And It Should Be
In conversion models and retention strategies, emotional friction is often underutilized. Cold technical messages amplify that friction. What if we treated error contexts with the same marketing attention we give CTAs and landing pages?
A system that recognizes a trigger—insufficient balance—could instead ask, “It looks like your current credit won’t cover this request. Want to continue where you left off after a recharge?” That message acknowledges what’s happening, avoids blame, and invites continuation. Sometimes, your ability to preserve momentum does more for user loyalty than your latest feature release.
What Happens When You Don’t Fix It?
Let’s say you think this is a technical detail, not a business priority. What happens next?
- Lost Revenue: Users don’t recharge—or worse, churn—because they never understood why a feature failed.
- Extra Support Load: Tickets replicate across users asking for clarification, all avoidable with better error writing.
- Brand Damage: Invisible, but real. Users begin seeing your product as clunky or untrustworthy.
And worst of all: they stop recommending your service. Not because your product doesn’t work, but because they felt like an outsider when it didn’t.
How to Fix It (And Why Your Marketing Team Should Help)
You fix it by uniting product, engineering, and marketing. You stop treating error content as a footnote. And you rewrite these moments to be just as smart, sharp, and persuasive as your homepage copy.
Create content templates for various failure types. Run A/B tests on phrasing. Survey users on what they expected during a failed transaction. Build logic into your UI that acknowledges emotional design—not just functional events. Reward clarity. Align failures with recovery strategies, not finger-pointing. Done well, your users will thank you with their wallets—and their word-of-mouth.
Final Thought: Start Where the Pain Is Obvious
Every time your system produces a message like “This text does not contain a story to be extracted…,” two things are clear: the system thinks technically, but your users don’t. That disconnect breeds costs: missed renewals, poor reviews, lost trust. And it’s entirely avoidable.
Ask yourself: What would this look like if we were writing to help a friend who got stuck? Start there, and you’ll not only avoid frustration—you’ll train every part of your product culture to respect the power of communication. Because when the message matters, so does the messenger.
#ErrorCommunication #UserExperience #SaaSRetention #TechThatConnects #SmartUX #HumanCenteredDesign
Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Muriel Liu (yl0p9ih-i0Q)
