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Business apology tip #10 - do better next time
By Lauren | June 5, 2009
Continuing our series on business apologies, let’s assume you’ve followed all the steps so far. You’ve said you’re sorry to your angry customer or client, taken responsibility for your mistake, expressed appreciation, listened, and made amends. But there’s another step you need to take:
You need to do better next time.
This element involves several steps. First, you have to do something to prevent this particular customer or client from having the same bad experience with you in the future. How you’ll do that will depend on what went wrong in the first place. Let’s say, for example, that you were late with a shipment of merchandise, causing your customer to lose sales. You’ll need to find a way to make sure that future shipments to that customer are timely, and check periodically to confirm that whatever changes you put in place continue to be effective.
Second, you’ll need to make sure that other customers don’t suffer a similar mistake. If possible, address the first point with improvements to your systems and processes - buying better computer equipment, improving your employee training, redesigning your assembly line, or what have you. By making systemic changes, you can often not only protect the angry customer who brought the problem to your attention in the first place, but improve other customers’ experiences as well.
Third, you need to tell your unhappy customer or client what you’ve done or plan to do to prevent future problems when you make your apology, or as soon thereafter as possible. Even if your apology was superbly delivered in every other respect, your customer is likely to be a little skeptical unless you can explain how you’re going to keep the mistake from happening again. Taking concrete steps to do better next time goes a long way toward demonstrating your sincere desire to make things right, and sincerity is essential to an effective apology.
Topics: Apologies, Business Ethics, business communications, customer relations, ethics |
June 5th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Very important, this last step, and one that many people ignore. The very essense of apology is changing one’s behavior. Every apology must have within it the answser to the question, how am I to be held accountable? Lauren, you laid out the options very nicely.
I quibble with the essence of sincerity to effective apology, except as demonstrated by concrete action. Customers don’t care about our sincerity; they care about our performance. When we offend a client, they may accept our apology but will rightly be skeptical about trusting us. It’s not our sincerity they want to see. They want to see us live up to our promises. Our ability to deliver is what allows us to claim sincerity.
June 8th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Hi John,
Welcome to my blog! And I completely agree that sincerity is demonstrated by concrete action. Unless one follows up on an apology by doing better, an apology may end up seeming like so much empty air.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
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June 26th, 2009 at 4:52 am
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