First, I am not presumptuous enough to tell anyone how to apologize, or think I am in any way an expert at it. I am just pretty good at it, so I thought I would share what I have learned.
So this is how I apologize – your mileage may vary.
1. Listen. And by that I do not mean, “let the customer vent”. I mean listen. Listening is not passive. Listening is active, and you should be contributing back to the conversation even as you listen. You should be seeking clarifications at this point. Do not get defensive.
2. Repeat what you think you heard and make sure you and the customer agree with the basic issues. This is actually a great opportunity to dig deeper and find out what that one really big pain point is (and in my experience, it is almost always one major issue, even if they have a laundry list of issues to start with). Listen and engage – don’t just listen – they will think you are blowing them off – or that you just get paid to listen. Interact.
2a – Do correct any factual mistakes or assumptions your customer has made at this point. But do it in a methodical and no-nonsense, non-threatening way. Make that quick and then focus on the main issue.
3. Know what you are talking about. Know your product better than your customer does. Make sure you know the pain points. It makes all the difference.
4. Empathy – people often mistake this as “feeling sorry for”. It is NOT. Empathy is more like, “been there, done that”. People who raised children alone are empathetic to each other. Those who haven’t often “sympathize”. Being sympathetic is nowhere near as effective as establishing that connection with the customer. Empathizing is a shared pain point – one the customer knows you have also experienced – because you really have, and you can share thier pain because you have honestly felt it.
5. Follow up. No painful customer conversation should ever end with one conversation. Call them again in a week. Ask if they are doing any better – or if you are doing any better.
6. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver, but deliver what you promise.
7. Take their side when you should. Don’t be afraid to agree with your customer if they say, “this feature sucks”. If it sucks, it sucks. And if it truly sucks and you try to pretend it does not – you have lost.
8. Invite the customer in. Tell them how to send suggestions for improvement – offer to call them every couple weeks to get feedback. Add them to your advisory board. Customers that are so passionate about your product that they get angry when you fail them are the best customers to have advising you. They care enough to let you know they care. And tell you what they think, and what they need.
9. Be human. This is vastly underestimated in most of the reading I have done on this topic. If you have a script for dealing with upset customers then you fail.
10. Don’t offer to credit or “pay” your customer anything until you get through most of these steps. Customers that are passionate about your product but just pissed about a current issue, or even a longtime flaw will just get offended. Do offer reparations after the fact if that makes sense. But if a refund is your opening move you are destined to fail quickly.
So those are ten quick points – and they don’t apply to everyone, I know. I wasn’t trying to write a rule book – just trying to explain how I apologize.
I listen actively, with engagement. Make sure I really understand the important issues. I know the product so well that I probably know their pain point as well as they do. So I can empathize – without seeming phony. I don’t let it stop at one conversation and I share all my personal contact info, including my home phone number. But I DO make it clear that I am not support – I am more of a lifeline. I do not want to be the first person they call. So I set boundaries.
I treat people well. Even if they are angry at me/my employer. Everyone is allowed some emotional and sometimes even irrational moments. I have my share of those.
I don’t try to pay to make the problem go away. I try to make the problem go away and then use credits/refunds as more of a parting hug.
I also make myself available – I am easy for customers to find. And I want to be found. I want to try and make someone happy. That’s my job – why would I hide from it.
I’m no Social Media pundit – there are thousands of them that describe themselves as such. Just yesterday I was followed on Twitter by someone who had a bio of “Twitter Marketer Extraordinaire”. I have no clue what that means, but I won’t pay for it. Won’t follow it either. It seems like rubbish to me.
I have no such illusions or delusions about my ability to use, and find useful, this new tool-set we’ve been given. Twitter is but a knife in a culinary set though. It is not a full set of utensils. We have an ever-growing set of tools and utensils. And I don’t think the tools matter much – at least not as much as how we decide to use them. A knife can be used to cut. Or it can be used to butter a shared loaf of bread.
Yes, the tools change – but the way they are wielded has been unchanged for decades.
So let us ignore individual tools for now, since they are so varied, and they have a different level of usefulness depending on your company and industry.
The bigger question is, “Can Social Media Be Measured?”. I ask a smaller question – “Should it be measured”?
I’ve effectively used social media in a number of ways. But that doesn’t make it a replacement for meeting people face to face, or using more traditional methods to target a specific audience.
Social Media is a shotgun approach to meeting and conversing with those that you are interested in; or might be interested in you. It is, if done well, an invitation – and that should be enough. For me, and my company, it is enough.
But behind that invitation to a conversation you need real people – people that know your business, and your product – and that are empowered to affect change. Otherwise you are talking to a wall.
Social Media has been useful to me, and to the company I work for, because we don’t just listen and respond with useless banter. We have a team of engineers behind us that actually CAN make change happen. In fact – our entire Social Media Team IS engineers. We have also been customers. WE know what the pain points are – and this was done by design.
When you have that level of understanding of your customers – and what they really need – well, measurement takes on a new meaning. A less significant one. We use “social” to be helpful – with people empowered to help.
I am not overly concerned about “measuring” Social Media – as long as we keep it relevant. If it is relevant to your business – as long as it causes conversations and resolves customer issues – well, I don’t think it needs to be measure more than that – today. Over time measurement will become more important.
But if you work for a company now that is MOST concerned with measurement – and NOT as concerned with your impact – be afraid.
Focus on just making a difference. The tools will catch up to us. If you try to catch up to the tools you will take your eye off the prize – customer engagement.
So I have ONE measurement this year – only one. How do my social media outreaches affect customers. How involved are they where I post, with what I care about, and in a context that makes sense to me and my business?
Do they care about what I care about? DO I care about what they care about?
If they respond in any way, I can measure social media.
If they do not respond, I can also measure social media 
But I am not keeping score beyond, “Are we doing more good than bad”.
I think many are over-thinking this right now.
Are you talking to your customer or not? If you are – you can measure that – just by the number of conversations. If you are not – don’t waste your time in measuring in.
But don’t focus on the numbers. Focus on the conversations. The REAL conversations you have with customers.
Rob
“Social Media” is amazing in how it lets you meet your customers – on their terms. It has changed the way business is done. There is no hiding from your flaws. Everything is “open”. Social media is very much the open sourcing of traditional PR and Marketing.
And as powerful as it is – you need to realize what it means. If you want to “control your brand” then social media will scare the crap out of you. If you want to understand your brand, it is invaluable.
When my employer suffers even a small failure in even a fraction of a percent of one of our data centers we see Tweets that say, “Rackspace is down”. While this is often 99% untrue we realize that for that 1% it is 100% true. So we treat it as if we are down. 1% isn’t acceptable and we don’t disagree with those that paint any outage as a significant outage. Our goal is perfection. We know we cannot achieve it, but we also realize we can most closely approach it by simply expecting it of ourselves. And letting our customers demand it of us – even encouraging them to do so.
Does that get painful at times? Certainly. Do we sometimes feel as if we should be more defensive – absolutely. It would be nice to minimize the concern to shareholders, employees, and customers when only a fraction of customers are affected by an issue. But that also requires that we minimize the pain that affected customers feel – and we aren’t willing to make that trade. There aren’t many successful companies that minimize or marginalize their customers.
Most of us at my office run our own websites – and we know how painful downtime is. In fact, many of us were Rackspace customers before we came to work here – and we chose to work here because we know that the good far outweighs the bad. Especially compared to the industry as a whole. We are expected to be perfect in an imperfect technology. Failure is in our future. We know we can’t be perfect. So we plan for when we aren’t. But we are here because we love to help. We feel most successful when we give others the ability to succeed. And we can’t do that unless we know how and when we are failing them. So we really appreciate that social media allows us to have those conversations early, and often.
But a failure is a failure – and they all hurt. And social media may make that failure more apparent to more people – and frame things in context that sound ominous. But we would rather hear about our failures than hide from them.
And social media makes damned sure that every failure is heard. But it also makes sure that every success is shared. So it is a double-edged sword. Once you realize that you don’t wield the sword you start to think more pragmatically about things.
Then social media becomes what relationship management has always been about. Add more value than noise. Be genuinely concerned. Do better. Learn. Get better. Invest where your customers tell you to invest.
Be honest, and don’t be afraid. Embrace the chaos.
