The Apology Impulse

The Apology Impulse will help you and your business become more authentic in your relationships with others by identifying how much companies say sorry, why they do, how they get it wrong, and the right way to do it.

American Airlines apologized roughly 200 times per day to customers in just the first part of 2014. Were they in a terrible crisis or something? No, everything was going well. They were just saying sorry for every minor error that came up.

Companies in the same sector as American Airlines have to be careful about customer complaints. That’s because it’s easy for people to use another company when something goes wrong.

Banks, in contrast, don’t have to worry as much about customer service because it’s pretty time-consuming for people to change who they bank with.

Social media has made this even worse. People can go online and share even the smallest slip up a company does with the entire world. It also gives businesses a place to interact, which usually means they’re apologizing too often.

It might sound like a good thing that corporations are owning up to their mistakes but the reality is, it just makes the word “sorry” lose meaning.

Take the grocery chain Tesco, for example. They used the phrase “very sorry” to describe how they felt after giving a customer the wrong medication.

But by using the same words to describe a labeling error on costumes, the company diluted the meaning of “very sorry.”

If you’re going to apologize, focusing on quality over quantity has the power to improve your credibility and reputation.

I remember learning when I was young that “sorry” meant that you’ll never do it again. When you actually follow through with this, it can have dramatically positive effects on your personal and business relationships. But when you fail to follow-through and have to keep apologizing, you lose a lot of trust. Take Mark Zuckerberg, for example. In 2010 the world heard him apologize for privacy issues with the fairly new Facebook. Figuring there were just some growing pains, people forgave him. But just eight years later in 2018, he had to be saying sorry again for the same privacy problems! His lack of action made his second apology feel awfully hollow. Contrast this with the actions of JetBlue’s CEO David Neeleman after 130,000 customers experienced issues after flight disruptions. He apologized sincerely and didn’t stop with just words but then created an action plan. Sharing his “customer bill of rights” in a YouTube video, he outlined what customers would get when their flights were delayed in the future. And he took his commitment seriously by following through and making it actually happen. Starbucks…