The Cost of Technical Miscommunication

How hard can the cost of technical miscommunication hit? Jamie explores how it can impact your bottom line with engaging examples. He provides three practical ways to help you minimise the cost of technical miscommunication and prevent it.

Picture a bucket full of water. The bucket represents your business and the water is money. Now imagine poking holes in the bottom of the bucket. Those holes are miscommunication.

The cost of miscommunication is not something that tends to be obvious at first, but it can really add up.

For example, a sales team spends weeks preparing a proposal for a client’s RFP. They work late nights, they order in pizza and coffee, they put other projects on hold.

But when they go to present it to the client, it turns out they forgot to answer the client’s most basic questions. Proposal rejected.

In this instance, not only do we have the opportunity cost of not getting that client’s business, we also have all the wasted staff hours put into preparing it, the costs of those pizzas and coffees, and the opportunity cost of a few other opportunities.

When you add up the waste and opportunity cost, that’s a pretty big cost, all because they failed to answer the client’s most basic questions.

Miscommunication hits in other ways too.

Take the cost of technical miscommunication.

You roll out a new CRM system. The transition to a new system is a big shock to the company, and the staff are clearly frustrated. So you hire an IT Trainer to train staff on how to use it.

But the trainer is boring, the training useless and the staff still don’t know how to use it. But what’s more, they’re now even more frustrated than they originally were, because they feel so under supported.

In this instance, besides the wasted staff hours and waste from underutilisation of an expensive system, you now have the cost of disengagement. Staff leave the training with lower morale. Lower morale leads to greater stress. Greater stress means more sick leave, lower productivity and experienced workers resigning.

The cost of technical miscommunication is not always tangible – sometimes the biggest cost comes from the things you can’t measure, like engagement and reputation.

And in this article, we’re going to look at how we can plug those leaky buckets, reduce the cost of technical miscommunication and in some cases prevent it, by doing the following:

• Analysing Audience Context
• Editing with Ruthless Essentialism
• Bringing Ideas to Life.

Reducing the Cost of Technical Miscommunication by Analysing Audience Context

Eze-On is an e-commerce company specialising in premium quality tech accessories (such as iPhone cables, laptop stands etc.) at affordable prices. In the last 3 years they’ve grown from $2 million USD in annual revenue to $15 million USD, and they’ve just expanded to 5 new markets. Their investors see a lot of potential and have given them highly ambitious growth targets for the next few years.

You are a Cybersecurity consultant, and your job is to convince them to buy Cybersecurity insurance coverage.

To you, the need for such coverage is obvious. Companies around the world are being hit left, right and centre by cybersecurity attacks and it’s costing them millions, hundreds of millions and in some cases billions.

You eat, sleep and breathe Cybersecurity. It’s your job, it’s your passion. So of course, the need for Cybersecurity is obvious to you.

So, it would be all too easy for you to go into a meeting with Eze-On, a meeting you’ve fought tooth and nail to get because they’re so busy, and assume they’ll care. They’re an e-commerce business, their fast growth makes them high-profile and therefore high-risk, of course they should care.

But much to your surprise, you are instantly shot down and your meeting is over within 10 minutes. The CEO, clearly having not slept much recently, and clearly having not taken much care of their health either, almost shouts at you “If you can’t help me grow, you’re wasting my time, goodbye!”

What just happened?

Had instead you paid a bit more attention to their context you may have avoided that scenario.

A simple way to think about context is that it is the journey your audience is on.

A journey has a destination, a place of origin, a purpose for leaving the origin and moving to the destination, a path to the destination and steps on the path.

What journey is your audience on?

For Eze-On, their destination is to hit their investors highly ambitious growth targets.

Their place of origin (where they are now) is that investors have poured in heaps of investment, and along with it a lot of pressure placed on the CEO. Those investors expect to see returns on their investment, and every so often they like to remind the CEO with 3am meetings to accommodate their time zone difference.

The path from here to there is 3 words: Open, Hire, SELL, SELL, SELL! (OK that’s 5 words).

Now you know a bit more about the context of this company.

As you walk out of the meeting room and through the office to the elevators, you notice there’s not a lot of laughter in the office. People seem frantic and stressed.

You realise that under such pressure, all anyone in this company can think about is opening new offices, hiring new staff and selling, selling, selling!

And you realise you didn’t frame Cybersecurity in this context.

In those 10 minutes, instead of giving your standard elevator pitch, you could have related to their context.

How does Cybersecurity fit into their journey?

If instead you helped them see that their rapid growth profile puts them at especially high-risk for cybersecurity attacks that could hinder growth for years, then maybe you would have got their attention.

Two minutes is the time it would have taken you to tell the story of that other e-commerce company you worked with that was also growing rapidly, but that suffered a cyber-attack so severe that investors pulled out, and they eventually had to exit several markets.

Start by asking the CEO if they’ve ever heard the name of that company, and when they respond “No”, tell them, “Of course not, and here’s why…”

Another three minutes is the time it would have taken to explain the more cost-effective and time-efficient solution you have available that won’t distract them from their ruthless focus on “Open, Hire, SELL, SELL, SELL!”

And in five minutes you’ve already given them more than your 10-minute bog-standard sales pitch, and the CEO is now sitting upright and paying you their full attention.

And all it took was to connect your message to their journey.

Editing with Ruthless Essentialism to Minimise The Cost

You are the web developer for your business, and you’ve recently received a string of complaints.

The website is too slow. Prospects are leaving before the pages finish loading. The marketing team’s campaigns are underperforming and obviously it’s all your fault!

A new marketing campaign is about to launch, and you can’t let the company down. It’s on you to speed up the website before another campaign fails and sales starts taking a hit.

As you investigate the issue, you find there are several causes. You’ve outgrown your shared hosting plan, uncompressed images, render blocking JavaScript, CSS bloat, third-party plugins slowing everything down, legacy code inefficiencies, blah, blah, blah.

You start to come up with a selection of solutions. You could use a quick band-aid approach that’s nice and cheap, you could upgrade the server, you could spend a bit more time optimising the code, you could do content management training for the marketing team so they stop uploading media in the wrong sizes and format, you could do an expensive website rebuild or you could use a hybrid phased approach…

But woah there. Did you notice that last paragraph triggered your Covid-induced brain fog again? It’s simply far too much information for an audience of non-experts to take in.

One thing about passionate and considerate problem solvers is they like to give their stakeholders options.

But stakeholders don’t always like options. Options require thinking. They already think too much about too many other things. Sometimes they just want the solution.

THE solution. They don’t want many, they want ONE. No audience wants to be overwhelmed. And overwhelm is a sure fire way of confusing your audience. You need to be ruthless and focused.

Ruthless essentialism is what you need, and the way to get it is through pain. Here’s an analogy:

Imagine you have five puppies, and you love these puppies. They’re lovely, adorable. And you have lots of happy memories of playing with them in the park, jumping and pouncing at butterflies in the air, and all snuggling up to each other at night time when you go to bed. You absolutely adore every single one of these puppies.

But as time goes by, the puppies get bigger. They need more food. They take up more space, and they become more expensive. And eventually, you realise you can’t afford to keep all five puppies. You can only afford to keep one puppy, and you need to give four puppies away. And as all five puppies are sitting on the ground, looking up at you with their puppy dog eyes saying “Don’t leave me!” you have to decide which four puppies to give up.

That is how it should feel when it comes to communicating important information. You have so much you want to say, but you can’t keep all of your puppies, you have to let go. If you try to say too much, it will overwhelm the audience and they won’t remember anything.

As you reflect on the puppy analogy, you realise the business would be better off with the hybrid solution, a solution that allows for quick fixes for the short-term whilst building a stronger foundation for the long-term. You delete 57 slides from your PowerPoint deck and just keep four slides. You trim all the details they don’t know and would never understand anyway and prepare a simple two-minute presentation.

Overcomplicating serves no one. Let go of those puppies.

Bringing Ideas to Life to Avoid Technical Miscommunication

Your CEO has fully bought into the idea of AI first, and they’ve informed you and the Customer Experience Manager that they intend to replace all customer service staff with AI.

You do not support this idea at all. You know from your experience on the front line that this will not go down well at all. But it’s clear your CEO is so bought into the idea and excited by the possibilities that they’re judgement has become clouded.

The point you want to make is essentially “Full AI replacement will reduce customer satisfaction and increase churn due to the loss of human empathy and complex problem-solving capabilities”.

That point makes sense to me, and I’m guessing to you too, but your CEO who is so deep down the AI rabbit hole, doesn’t quite process what you’re saying. It’s clear you need to bring this idea to life to make it stick.

Here is where my 3 Ingredients of Stories come in handy, they are basically the elements of storytelling that stick clearly in our minds and bring ideas to life. This is something I talk about in more detail in A Quick Guide to Storytelling in the Workplace, but let me give you a brief overview here.

The First Ingredient – Show, Don’t Tell

In essence, don’t tell your CEO that full AI replacement will blah blah blah. SHOW them.

A great way of doing this is letting them listen to recordings of customer conversations (recorded with customer permission of course) or look at customer testimonials or even using real-examples.

For example:

“Yesterday, Mrs. Chen called because her elderly mother’s medical equipment order was delayed and she was panicking.

Our agent Sarah didn’t just track the shipment – she called the warehouse directly, arranged emergency delivery, and stayed on the phone while Mrs. Chen’s mother tested the equipment. Mrs. Chen cried with relief and said ‘Sarah saved my mother’s life.’

Last month, when Mrs. Chen needed another medical device, she called us instead of ordering from Amazon because she remembered how Sarah cared about her mother.”

The Second Ingredient – Analogies & Metaphors

Analogies and Metaphors (essentially the same thing) are like bridges that connect your idea to something the audience understand very well.

It just so happens that a few months ago your CEO had an accident and was rushed to the nearest hospital emergency room (thankfully he was OK in the end) and the memory of this experience is still fresh in their mind. So, you use an analogy:

“Think of customer service like a hospital emergency room. Yes, you could replace doctors with diagnostic machines that work faster and cheaper. The machines can handle 80% of cases – checking blood pressure, taking temperatures, diagnosing simple problems.

But when someone comes in having a heart attack, crying, scared, and confused, they need a human doctor who can read between the lines, make complex decisions, and provide reassurance.

AI is our diagnostic machine – great for routine issues. But when customers are frustrated, confused, or dealing with complicated problems, they need our ‘doctors with that human touch.’”

The Third Ingredient – Contrast

By showing the difference between one thing and another you create a space for meaning to emerge.

Here is a great opportunity to show the difference between an AI First approach and a Human-AI Hybrid approach, especially when you focus on a few specific areas.

You can show a simple table here to highlight the contrast:

If you can back your points up here with strong evidence and data, then this contrast can be especially impactful.

Three practical examples of how you can minimise the cost of technical miscommunication and prevent it. Remember, sometimes the most significant costs arise from the aspects that are difficult to quantify – engagement and reputation. And these can significantly impact an organisation’s long-term success and bottom line if not adequately managed.

We ran a webinar – “In a Technical Role: How to Communicate Complex Ideas with Clarity” – in July 2025 exploring helpful ways to avoid overwhelming an audience with technical communication. It offered practical takeaways to structuring messaging in a clear, engaging and purposeful way to drive impact and action. If you missed the webinar and would like to discuss your needs, or arrange a dedicated session for your team, please contact us.