Your tech stack isn’t just about productivity. It’s tied directly to how customers see your business. Slow systems, broken workflows, and outdated tools frustrate users and quietly erode trust. Over time, these problems add up, and they show up in reviews, complaints, and even security risks.
Travis Schreiber, Director of Operations at Erase , has seen this play out repeatedly. He’s spent years helping companies connect their backend processes with their reputation strategies. “Most of the time, people don’t think about how their tech impacts perception until it’s too late,” he says. “You get a few bad reviews because your customer portal is clunky or an integration fails, and suddenly it’s a pattern that anyone Googling you can see.”
Here’s how old tech stacks chip away at trust, why it matters, and what businesses can do to fix it.
Tech Debt Isn’t Just Internal
When most teams talk about tech debt, they treat it as an internal issue, an IT headache or a project they’ll get to later. But customers notice it long before leadership does.
A 2024 Salesforce study found that 88% of customers say experience matters as much as the product itself. Laggy checkout flows, outdated design, or broken automations don’t just annoy people, they push them toward competitors.
Schreiber recalls working with a mid-sized car insurance company that ran on a legacy billing system. “It was fine until it wasn’t,” he says. “When their invoices started going out late, support tickets piled up, and people started posting screenshots of errors on social media. It wasn’t just about fixing the billing tool anymore. It became a reputation problem.”
How Security Risks Amplify
Old tools aren’t just clunky, they’re vulnerable. Legacy systems often miss modern security patches or require custom fixes that get deprioritized.
“Outdated CRMs are one of the biggest risks we see,” Schreiber notes. “We had a massive healthcare client whose internal communication platform accidentally indexed private internal chat logs on Google.”
The reputational damage from a single breach can outlast the technical fix. According to IBM’s 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report, 51% of consumers say they won’t do business with a company after a breach.
Customers rarely care if the root cause was outdated middleware or an API misconfiguration. They care that their data wasn’t safe, and they’ll share it publicly.
The Link Between Tech and Perception
Even simple annoyances tie back to brand trust. Poor mobile optimization, email errors from bad automations, or slow response times due to clunky ticketing systems all create a paper trail online.
“Negative reviews almost never say, ‘Your backend API failed,’” Schreiber explains. “They say, ‘I couldn’t log in,’ or, ‘They didn’t get back to me for a week.’ The tech problem turns into a trust problem instantly.”
Over time, these touchpoints stack. You don’t just lose a sale. You lose credibility. Search results start surfacing complaints. Prospects see screenshots in forums. AI summaries and reputation tools pick up that chatter.
Fixing Tech Debt Before It Hits Reviews
The good news: this isn’t just an IT problem. It’s operational. It’s fixable if you treat tech debt as part of brand protection, not a separate track.
1. Audit Your Stack
Review every tool and integration that touches customers. “Look at it like a customer would,” Schreiber says. “Sign up for your own service. Click every email. Use your own support system. If it feels slow or clunky, they feel it too.”
2. Prioritize Patches Over New Features
Don’t ignore updates for the tools you already use. Companies obsess over adding flashy features while their login process still takes 45 seconds to load. Fix the basics before building anything new.
3. Secure Automations
Automated workflows save time, but unsecured or misconfigured ones expose data. Audit permissions and remove any stale connections.
4. Embed Reputation Monitoring
Set up alerts for complaints about broken systems. Tools like Brand24 or even simple Google Alerts help you catch issues early. If your billing portal is glitching and three people mention it on Reddit, you want to know before it’s on page one of your search results.
Bake Reputation Into Operations
Tech debt isn’t just about code. It’s about how your operational processes either protect or damage your reputation.
Automate Review Monitoring
If a system failure triggers a wave of bad reviews, you should know immediately. Integrate review tracking into your workflows. Assign someone ownership of responding quickly with context and resolution.
Standardize Communication Scripts
When tech fails, the response matters as much as the fix. Build scripts for customer-facing teams that explain outages or errors clearly. “The worst thing you can do is go silent,” Schreiber says. “Even a quick post saying, ‘We know, we’re fixing it,’ buys you goodwill.”
Document and Train
Tech fixes don’t stick if your team doesn’t know how to use them. Build simple documentation, and train staff on every major system.
Why Reputation Starts With Infrastructure
Reputation management is often seen as PR. In reality, it’s operational. The tools you use and how you maintain them directly shape how customers talk about you.
“You can spend six figures on brand campaigns, but if your login page times out, none of that matters,” Schreiber says.
Modern search amplifies this. AI summaries and review aggregators don’t care how strong your marketing is, they scrape whatever complaints or praise are most visible. If old tech is creating new problems, that’s what will surface first.
The Bottom Line
Your tech stack isn’t invisible. Customers feel it every time they interact with your business. When outdated systems or ignored fixes get in the way, they don’t just hurt efficiency. They quietly chip away at trust.
By treating tech maintenance and process design as part of reputation management, businesses can stay ahead. Audit systems, fix what customers feel first, and embed safeguards that keep problems from leaking into public view.
Because once it’s out there, it’s not just an IT ticket, it’s a Google result. And that’s a much harder fix.
Notes: This post was edited/created using GenAI tools. Image: DIW-Aigen.
Read next:
• AI Models Write Code That Works, But Often Miss Security Basics
• Cybercrime Grows More Aggressive in 2025 as Identity Becomes a Central Target