Say You’re Sorry

You fucked up and it’s ok.

Business is all about relationships; whether its in B2B or B2C, customers want to work with businesses that they feel are reputable and honest. Naturally, relationships become strained when one party feels violated, insulted, or mislead. Despite everyone’s best intentions, mistakes happen. What separates brands is how they respond to their customers in these situations. There are two schools of customer service that come into play when companies deal with screw-ups: acceptance or denial.

Far too often businesses choose to deny any wrongdoing and redirect attention away from the potential issue. This is done to maintain brand credibility and prevent any bad publicity from establishing itself. Since customers don’t often have enough proof of their grievance, any criticism is usually brushed off by the brand. But this is the wrong way to go about things, as it leaves customers with bad experiences and tends to generate negative word of mouth in the long-term.

So you fucked up, it’s fine. Mistakes happen and brands need to be aware of the reality that accepting these mistakes goes a long way to creating a trusting relationship between business and customer. Make your customers feel like you care about their opinion and they’ll continue to do business with you. In the age of Twitter, brands can’t afford to annoy their customers; the Internet’s memory is long and merciless.