Being a large company, even a listed one worth millions or billions, does not give you immunity against mistakes that some people would call obvious.
I have used many apps with errors that simply should not exist. I will list them here without naming any company, of course. Nobody is immune to mistakes, and I write this as a customer who uses these services and wants them to succeed. The problem is not that the mistake exists. The problem is that the fix is easy and it has been sitting there, unfixed, for a long time.
Real examples, no names
A large services company with more than 5,000 employees
- They ship app updates without fixing the problems from previous releases.
- They announced a new feature in the app that does not work. The update is a month old now with no fix.
- The user experience is bad enough that you brace yourself every time you need to use anything of theirs.
- Payment errors appear every now and then, and the billing line items are unclear.
A retailer with branches in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries
- The customer service experience is poor. I have an old loyalty card that exists in their system, but I cannot use it online. The branch sent me to the call center, and the call center says there is no proof the card is mine, because they send a temporary password to the number linked to the card. The number linked to the card is a landline. (Yes, the card is older than mobile phones.)
- The app is hard to use. You set specific criteria and search on their site or app, and there is no clear way to filter products so you can find what you want.
A large retailer in electronics and appliances
- The app is crowded, and it is clearly organized around the company's internal departments. For example, there is a section for branch purchases and a separate one for purchases made through the site and app. The customer has nothing to do with your org chart.
- Some pages are in Arabic and some in English. That splits the user's attention.
- Walls of text nobody has time to read, copied straight from marketing material without being simplified.
One of the large Saudi banks
- This bank's services are excellent, but a few details make the experience mildly annoying.
- There are features clearly still in progress and visibly not ready. I tried to activate one (honestly, probably not a widely used one) and got a series of strange error messages with no explanation.
- Some flows were apparently only ever tested on the website. In the app I get a vague error message; on the website the same flow produces a clear one.
A company in car services
- The app's benefits and how it works are unclear.
- Branch staff do not know how the app works.
- There is no clear way to reach customer service.
- Multiple apps in the store, each with different services.
- An old app still live with no announcement that a new one exists.
A government app
- A problem I hit constantly: the app and the website do not behave the same. I upload an attachment in the app and it gets rejected for a vague reason. The same attachment goes through the website smoothly.
- Not all services exist in the app, which forces constant switching between app and website.
- The user experience is completely different between the two.
Another services company
- The app design feels fifteen years old.
- Full of errors, and slow to respond.
- The app holds information, but as a user I have no idea how it helps me. I open it once a month to pay the bill.
An insurance company
- Multiple apps.
- Many services inside the app, some of which belong to external services.
- Renewing the policy is hard. (Honestly, I wait for someone to call me so I can negotiate the price, then they send me a payment link.)
- To find one piece of information, I have to search several places before it turns up.
A second government app
- A genuinely nice app with genuinely useful free services, but every service sits behind national single sign-on. Some services could come before the sign-on step and make usage easier.
- Some services are tied to a specific date. I wish I could see the options and requirements before applications officially open. It would help me make the right decision faster.
A delivery company
- Full of errors. 90 riyals was taken from me because the system does not work correctly, and customer service says the payment does not exist.
- One page says I have a shipment. Another page says I have none.
- A feature in the app with no relation to the business at all, like adding a water intake tracker to a banking app. Clear distraction with no clear purpose, and if there is a purpose, they have not managed to explain it.
A loyalty app for a company with many branches
- The loyalty tiers are wrong. The person who bought once and the person who bought a hundred times get the same status and the same benefits. The app creates no loyalty.
- The points formula changed with no explanation. Suddenly I earn fewer points than I used to.
- Multiple apps for the same company, which confuses the customer.
What do they have in common? The same list repeats
And there are many more. Nobody is infallible. But every observation I listed has an easy fix, and has gone a long time without one. In my view, and from more than 20 years of experience across the projects I have worked on and the companies I have worked with, the causes come down to this list:
- Personal sensitivities between departments.
- No clear process for handling this kind of feedback.
- No single person holding full ownership of problem-related matters.
- Management disconnected from what is happening on the ground.
- Departments disconnected from each other. Each one operates like a separate company working in isolation.
- No coordination between the front line facing the customer and the teams working in the background.
- No function responsible for customer experience.
- Decisions take far too long.
Many other problems can produce the same result. But when the main cause is present, meaning the most senior person responsible is simply not aware of these problems, they will continue with no clear resolution.
Sometimes the fix is easy: adjust a process, set a recurring meeting, clarify an ownership line. Sometimes it is hard: restructure a department, let someone go, hire new people.
The bill, in the end
- Losing the customer to a competitor. One problem after another leaves a lasting bad impression.
- Rising costs. The frustrated customer has to contact support, and the pressure there keeps building.
- A new customer tries the app, hits a problem, and decides on the spot to go to another company.
- The employee who genuinely cares loses the will, because basic problems sit unresolved for ages. Eventually they resign, possibly to a competitor.
The bottom line: everything has a solution. It just needs someone who cares and owns it.
And you? What are the problems at your workplace that could be affecting your customers?
I have spent more than 20 years turning exactly this kind of chaos into order inside companies of different sizes, and most of it starts with one question: who owns this problem? If the list above reads like a description of your app or your company, you can submit a request and tell me what you are dealing with. No commitment, just an honest conversation.