 "Book Extract: Learn to say sorry")
THE HIGH-SPEED COMPANY
Author: Jason Jennings with Laurence Haughton
Publisher: Portfolio Penguin
ISBN: 9781591847366
Price: $27.95
High-speed companies with an authentic purpose of doing something good and a solid set of guiding principles get in less trouble and do fewer stupid things than other companies, but once in a while something can go wrong for them too, and they'll need to apologize to a customer or customers. In 2013 trendy yoga-wear company Lululemon got into hot water when complaints came to light about its yoga pants being "too sheer." Lululemon's cofounder and chairman Chip Wilson said that the reason the pants were too sheer was because "they don't work for certain women's bodies." Yikes! He was heard by women everywhere to be saying, "You might be too fat to wear our pants."
When he apologized for those comments, the apology was as tone-deaf as the original offense. Speaking by video to employees (and not customers), Wilson said, "I'm sad for..the repercussions of my actions. ... I take responsibility. ... I ask you [employees] to stay in the conversation that is above the fray." That's not how you say you're sorry! Wilson stepped down a few months later, but the damage to the company was already done; Lululemon's share price had fallen 44 percent as of August 2014.
Bob Engel of CoBank found himself doing a lot of apologizing when he came in as president and COO. "I spent much of my first four years falling on my sword, apologizing for some terrible behavior and trying to rebuild credibility. I apologized so often, sometimes I wasn't sure what I was apologizing for," he says. "I had to go to customers one by one to convince them that we were going to be different from now on." CoBank and some of its predecessors had behaved poorly, like a lot of banks; according to Engel, "When the times got tough we said, the way bankers do, 'See you later.' Customers couldn't count on us in the tough times to treat them right."
If you want to avoid defections and recover from outrage and regret your company created when you failed to deliver what was expected, Engel says you've got to learn to say you're sorry for a misstep and show you mean it. Here's his advice:
Use your 'A' team
You can't outsource your recovery process to a call center or your newest low level associates. You need the coolest, most strategic-minded executives who are marvelous communicators. You need someone who thinks like the owner, who loves the customer, and who has his or her heart in the right place.
"I've always believed the toughest jobs belong to the CEO," Engel says. "Let me and my top people deal with the harder stuff. We've got the stripes (the authority) to convince someone when we say it's going to be different, it will be."
Listen, really listen
You need to understand, not be understood. That means listening with your full attention to your customers, getting the full story, feeling the weight of their disappointment, wearing your heart on your sleeve, and pressing them for all the ugly details until they say, "That's everything." The best outcome is to reach the point where they say, "Maybe I've gone a bit too far. Thanks for hearing me out."
Engel remembers a time one of his customers read him the riot act in public during a conference. "He jabbed his finger at me and said, 'When we hit a wall, you guys turned the knob on us, made our lives miserable, and didn't care a bit!'" Engel recalls. "'CoBank is a swear word in our offices now. It's cussing just to say your name.' Man, he really let me have it. I was there in front of a huge crowd of other Florida cooperative agribusiness customers, and I knew I had to just take it. It felt like he went on for an eternity but I bit my lip and didn't interrupt. When he was done, I said, 'I feel terrible. You're right and we were absolutely wrong. No one should treat customers like that. Give me a chance. I'm going to get this fixed.' We did, and now he's a big customer and one of my best friends."
Reprinted with permission
