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Business Apology Tip #9 - Make amends
By Lauren | May 29, 2009
Continuing with our series on effective business apologies, let’s turn to the first real action you’ll need to take. Thus far, you’ve mostly talked - investigated the mistake that offended your customer or client, discussed the matter with your lawyer if necessary, apologized, taken responsibility, expressed appreciation, and listened respectfully while your customer or client blew off steam.
Now, it’s time to take action. You need to make amends.
What you’ll offer depends on how serious the mistake was to begin with, and how much you need to do to make things right. At the very least, try to put the unhappy customer back to where he or she was when the mistake was made. That may be harder to do than you think. To use a simple example, imagine that you run a restaurant and the kitchen overcooked a customer’s steak. Bringing out another steak ten minutes later really won’t make it up to the customer, because he or she won’t have been able to eat with the other people at the table (unless everyone else waited and let their own food get cold). You need to do something extra to compensate for the “inconvenience and annoyance” factor. So, in addition to providing a perfectly-cooked steak in record time, you could take the steak off the bill, provide a free dessert, or offer a complementary bottle of wine. The idea is not just to make things right, but to make them a little better than they would have been if the mistake hadn’t occurred in the first place.
One thing businesses frequently do to make amends after a mistake is to offer something that requires the unhappy customer to come back and spend more money - a “buy one, get one free” gift certificate, or something along those lines. Those little perks can be nice, but most customers aren’t fooled by them and they usually aren’t a good way to make amends. If you really want your apology to be effective, don’t offer something with strings attached. The more generous you are, the more likely it is that your apology will succeed.
More next Friday!
Topics: Business Ethics |
June 4th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
[...] presents Business Apology Tip #9 - Make amends posted at The Business Ethics Blog, saying, “Making amends means to make things right, but to [...]
June 16th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]