Summary: This article addresses a common technical situation many developers and application users face – JSON error responses, specifically the InsufficientBalanceError. While it may seem mundane or unrelated to storytelling and user experience, how these messages are structured—and more importantly, how they’re interpreted—can significantly influence user behavior, developer workflows, and team communication. This isn’t about the story the text tells. It’s about the absence of story and why that matters more than most people realize.
What the Error Message Is—And Isn’t
The statement in question reads: "There is no story to extract or rewrite from the provided text. The text appears to be a JSON error response indicating an 'InsufficientBalanceError' with a message asking the user to recharge their account."
At first glance, this seems like a simple technical issue—a response from a system saying you don’t have enough credits to complete a requested action. On the surface, it’s just a bit of plumbing. But the key thing here is this: there’s no story. There’s a notable absence of user context, empathetic design, or vision about what moment in the user journey this message arrives. It’s a pure diagnostic fact, stripped of human relevance.
The Missing Narrative Around Technical Responses
Let’s break it down. JSON responses are meant to be machine-readable. That’s the point of the format. But human beings develop, debug, and respond to these messages. So when a message says, “InsufficientBalanceError: please recharge your account,” what mental picture does that conjure for the developer working on the integration? What story does that tell the support staff responding to a user inquiry? What emotional state is the user in when encountering this mid-action?
Absolutely none of that context is present. Which can be fine—if your team is all on the same page. But more often than not, this is where friction begins. Developers hardwire assumptions. Designers aren’t consulted. Customer support improvises. Because there’s no narrative, they invent their own—sometimes contradictory, often flawed. That creates room for escalation, misalignment, and wasted time.
Why a Non-Story Can Lead to the Wrong Story
Consider this: when a system fails due to insufficient balance, that’s rarely a surprise to the user. But how that moment is handled dramatically shapes their trust in the product. Is it a dead-end block? A redirect? Is recharging easy and direct? Or did we just throw an error at their face and say, “Sorry, not our fault”? Silence breeds suspicion. Impersonality breeds disengagement.
Chris Voss teaches us that arguments are rarely about facts—they’re about perceived meaning and risk. A user blocked by an “InsufficientBalanceError” isn’t objecting to your policy; they’re reacting to the way they feel penalized or disrespected. So ask: how can such an error be phrased to invite the right perspective? Could the system instead pause, reflect transparency, and mirror the user’s likely concern? Could it say: “It looks like you’ve tried to perform an action that requires a balance we didn’t detect. Would you like to add funds now or return later?”
The Danger of Pretending There’s Nothing to Fix
Saying “There’s no story to extract” is a functional truth with a deeper lie. There’s always a story—just often not the one you’d prefer users to tell themselves. When digital systems speak without any empathy, they push users to fill in emotional blanks. The absence of narrative is not silence; it’s noise that someone else will interpret for you. The greater risk isn’t the insufficient balance—it’s insufficient communication.
Technical Debt Includes Communication Debt
Here’s the bigger problem underneath: this kind of messaging represents a class of technical debt that most engineering teams overlook. Communication debt. When systems output robot-speak, everyone down the chain suffers—even if they don’t vocalize it. Why? Because nobody took the extra 10 minutes to ask: “What would a real person need to feel in this moment?”
If you’re building platforms, selling SaaS, or running product teams—it’s your responsibility to turn “insufficient balance” into “actionable clarity.” It’s not about the error itself. It’s about building consistency in how friction is handled. And consistency is one of the strongest persuasion principles Robert Cialdini outlined—users commit more when your behavior helps them feel in control, not stranded.
Empathy Is a Feature, Not a Flaw
You may think this is about design or UX, and maybe that sounds fluffy. But don’t fall into that trap. This is strategy. This is retention. When PayPal, Stripe, or AWS throws a similar error, it’s not the alert that frustrates most users—it’s how hard or confusing it is to resolve. Empathy builds trust. It reduces support tickets. It saves onboarding time. And it doesn’t cost a dime extra in deployment.
What would it look like if developers weren’t just debugging systems, but parsing meaning? What if product managers treated “edge cases” not as problems, but as hidden signals for product growth? And most importantly, what if the people who wrote error messages were taught narrative framing and basic emotional intelligence?
Designing for Clarity, Not Just Accuracy
Accuracy in error responses is non-negotiable. But clarity turns functional noise into productive action. Your product may be sophisticated, but if users feel dumb when it breaks—even a little—they’ll blame your brand. They may click support, or worse, uninstall. All because somebody somewhere thought: “There’s no story in that.”
Want to change that? Try this: next time you write an error message, ask yourself five things—
- What emotion is the user likely experiencing at this moment?
- What options can we provide to give them forward motion?
- How can we explain the problem without shifting blame?
- Where’s the micro-copy real estate to soften friction?
- Is this message aligned with the product’s overall tone and values?
If you can answer those, your product moves from robotic utility to trusted ally. That shift is how you avoid frustration, drive usage, and earn loyalty. And that’s the only story that really matters.
The Real Takeaway: Tell the Story Before Someone Else Does
Every message your product delivers tells a story—whether you planned it or not. “Insufficient Balance” tells one. “No story here” tells another. The real question is: do you want your users writing the narrative alone?
Systems speak for you when you’re not present. Make sure they’re saying something useful—or at the very least, human.
#ProductUX #ErrorMessagesMatter #CommunicationDebt #UserRetention #SaaSDesign #HumanCenteredDesign #CialdiniInPractice #NarrativeUX #MarketingWithEmpathy
Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Markus Winkler (-q8MdTL2998)
