Your Customers Are Basically Cavemen (And That's Why Your AI Rollout Failed)
Your Customers Are Basically Cavemen (And That's Why Your AI Rollout Failed)
Check this out: 95% of companies implementing AI aren't seeing ROI.
Not because the tech is bad. Not because your engineers are slacking. But because you forgot that your customers are still running wetware from 10,000 BC.
I sat down with Donna Weber—a leading expert in customer onboarding—and she dropped a truth bomb so uncomfortable that half of you are already crafting angry LinkedIn comments.
Here it is: Your customers' brains are actively sabotaging your implementation.
The Spreadsheet Master Fallacy
Donna told me about this guy. Let's call him Dave. Dave spent years becoming the Spreadsheet Master™ at his company. Everyone comes to Dave for spreadsheet wizardry. Dave's entire identity is wrapped up in those little cells and formulas.
Now you want Dave to adopt your fancy fintech tool?
LOL. Good luck.
Dave's brain is literally screaming "LOSS AVERSION!" at full volume. He values his crusty old Excel sheets twice as much as your shiny new platform. It's called the endowment effect, and it's why people cling to their terrible legacy systems like drowning swimmers grabbing anything that floats.
This is behavioral economics. This is neuroscience. This is why 70-80% of all technical implementations fail.
And you thought it was just about having enough API endpoints.
That CEO Who Lasted 11 Days
Remember that genius who made it 11 days before getting roasted on LinkedIn? The one who mandated that everything had to go through AI first—couldn't even touch Google Docs without consulting a GPT?
Donna and I had a field day with this one.
That's not leadership. That's a dumpster fire with a TED Talk.
Here's what actually happened: That CEO activated the fear response in every single employee simultaneously. Their lizard brains lit up like Christmas trees. "IF I USE THIS BOT, I'M TRAINING MY REPLACEMENT."
Spoiler alert: When people feel threatened, they don't adopt your tool. They resist it. Consciously and subconsciously. They drag their feet. They "forget" to log in. They suddenly develop a passionate love for the old system.
You're Selling to Buyers, But Your Users Are Ghosting You
Here's the thing that keeps me up at night: Most B2B companies have the buyer persona locked down. You know exactly how to sell to that VP of Operations or that Chief Dental Officer.
But then what?
Donna worked with a dental practice management company. They nailed the sale to the dentist. High fives all around. But guess who actually has to use the platform? The hygienists. The receptionists. The dental techs.
If those people don't become heroes using your tool, you failed.
You made the sale, collected the check, and then forgot about the humans who actually have to change their entire workflow. The people who weren't even in the buying meeting. The people whose jobs are about to get way more complicated before they get easier.
The Planning Fallacy (AKA Why Your Kitchen Remodel Cost $47K Instead of $15K)
Donna mentioned she was about to shoot a video on the planning fallacy after our call. And honestly? Chef's kiss.
Things take twice as long and cost twice as much as we think. Every. Single. Time.
If you've ever remodeled a bathroom, you know this in your bones. You budgeted three weeks and $10K. It took two months and $25K. And you're grateful it wasn't worse.
Your customers have the same optimistic delusion about implementing your product. They think it'll be smooth sailing. It won't be.
And when reality hits—when it's taking longer, when adoption is slower, when people are complaining—they're going to blame you.
Unless you designed your onboarding with empathy from day one.
H2H: Stop Throwing Robots at Human Problems
This is my soapbox. My whole podcast is built on this: It's not B2B. It's not B2C. It's H2H. Human to Human.
You can't AI your way out of human psychology. You can't automate away the fact that change is neurologically threatening. You can't chatbot your way into someone's trust.
Donna said it perfectly: "People ultimately want human interaction. If it feels bot-like, they're gonna throw darts at it immediately."
The companies winning right now? They're the ones who get this. They start with empathy. They understand their users—not just their buyers. They experiment, iterate, and actually ask "Did this make a difference?" instead of just assuming their brilliant solution is working.
The Design Thinking Cycle You're Probably Skipping
Donna laid out the cycle in her book Onboarding Matters (yeah, it's award-winning, NBD):
Empathy - Know your users. Are they traveling executives? Mothers of small children? Shop floor workers on an oil field? You better know.
Ideate - Come up with ideas based on actual user needs, not what sounds cool in the boardroom.
Experiment - Start small. Test your hypothesis. See if it actually works.
Iterate - Rinse and repeat until you're not making people cry.
Most companies skip straight to "ROLL IT OUT TO EVERYONE" and then act shocked when it implodes.
What History Majors Know That Tech Bros Don't
Donna's a history major (same, by the way). And here's what history teaches you: People repeat the same patterns forever.
We have the memory of goldfish. We watch a company faceplant with a bad AI rollout on Monday, and by Friday, three more companies are doing the exact same thing.
It's not new. It's not innovative. It's just... predictable.
The good news? You can be the exception.
You can be the company that actually understands customer onboarding isn't about training. It's not about implementation. It's not about checking boxes on a deployment checklist.
It's about helping people become heroes at their jobs.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Your product might be technically superior. Your AI might be cutting-edge. Your features might be chef's kiss.
But if you don't understand the behavioral economics—the loss aversion, the sunk cost fallacy, the status quo bias, the planning fallacy—you're going to lose to someone who does.
Because while you're focused on APIs and data migration, they're focused on the humans who are scared, resistant, and clinging to their spreadsheets like Dave.
Watch the Full Episode
I could keep going (and I did, for 21 glorious minutes with Donna), but you should really just watch the episode.
We got into:
The specific unconscious biases sabotaging your implementations
Why Brit Andreatta's book Wired to Resist should be required reading
How to bridge the gap between buyers and users
What "becoming a hero" actually means for different user personas
Why the football field workers at Donna's clients need totally different onboarding than the C-suite
If you're in B2B Health Tech, Med Tech, or SaaS, and you're trying to grow in this absolute chaos of a market, this conversation is 21 minutes you can't afford to skip.
Because the next time you're in a meeting and someone says "Let's just push this AI feature to everyone," you'll know exactly why that's about to become a LinkedIn dumpster fire.
P.S. If this post made you uncomfortable, good. That means you're probably doing at least one of these things wrong. Hit me up if you want to talk about how to fix it before your next implementation becomes a case study in what not to do. And if you're Dave the Spreadsheet Master reading this—I see you, man. Your skills are valid. Just maybe give the new tool a chance?
Karl Pontau hosts The Human Connection Podcast, where we talk about the stuff that actually matters in business: the humans running it. Because whether you're B2B or B2C, it's really H2H, human to human. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode where we probably say something that'll make your HR department uncomfortable.
