How do you keep your brand out of nasty blog mentions? How do you keep good customers? How do you stop people from railing against your company? There are a lot of factors, but one of the most overlooked is the apology.
I can’t speak for every blogger, but my sense is that most of them don’t blog about terrible consumer experiences because they love being jerks, they do it because they’re frustrated and they’ve had enough.
I have a great accountant. It took me a very long time to find a great accountant, and went through a few before finding the one I currently use. He’s a wizard, knows all the questions to ask me to make sure I haven’t forgotten thousands of dollars worth of deductions (there’s a reason I went into marketing and not finance). I’ve sent a number of my friends to him, and they’ve all loved him as well.
The other day, as I went through a stack of unopened mail (I loathe mail), I noticed a letter from my accountant’s firm. Figuring it was a “don’t forget to do your taxes” letter, I opened it. It was an invoice dated the same day I had a five minute phone conversation with him. I wrote to the office manager, explained that when I emailed him a simple question about my upcoming tax return, and he phoned me with a quick answer, I never expected to be charged for a half hour of professional services.
The next morning, I had an email from the office manager apologizing for the mistake and telling me to disregard it. I had my taxes done today, and the second I walked in, the office manager apologized again. Of course, it was no big deal, but imagine if I had had to fight about this. Chances are, I would have thought twice about referring more people there… I might have even looked for a new accountant. But no, the office manager was helpful, prompt and apologetic and it turned a mistake into a non-issue.
Mistakes are interesting nexus points for organizations. They give the opportunity to show their true colours. Some companies never own up to mistakes and go out of their way to avoid correcting them. Others use these opportunities to show their true customer service stripes, and show the customer they actually do care.
If keeping long-term clients isn’t an issue, it’s probably cheaper to do the former. If on the other hand, the lifetime value of a client is important, a lot of trust can be built simply by acknowledging mistakes and fixing them promptly.
