These are the first two visa stamps in my first passport. April 25, 1993 into Japan and April 29, 1993 back out. These stamps represent the toughest customer visit of my career. And it still embarrasses me to see them in my passport.
All because I failed to say "I'm sorry."
Several of my favorite bloggers have been writing about apologies in the last week or so. In this post, I'll tell my Japan story and then summarize what my fellow bloggers and I see as the right way to apologize.
The Japan Story
In 1992, I became the resident manager of a paper mill on the west coast of the US, making paper for corrugated boxes. That summer, in an effort to reduce our wood costs, my boss and I agreed on a process change. Laboratory tests looked okay, and none of our experts thought we would see any product quality impact. So we made the change.
And made our first mistake: we didn't tell our customers what we were doing.
Things were fine for a few months. But in December, when our customers in Japan and South Korea were seeing the first cold, dry spells of the winter they began having trouble with our product. And the trouble quickly became severe. We knew the cause, and immediately revised the process. And I was sent to Japan and South Korea to restore our customers' trust.
And that's when we made our second mistake. Our division manager instructed me not to apologize, under any circumstances. My boss and I went along with that, and I boarded the plane prepared to hold firm that we had done nothing wrong.
Sounds pretty stupid now, doesn't it. Before I landed in Japan, I thought it was a great idea. By the end of the first day, I wasn't so sure.
After a long dinner and lecture, one of our longest term customers spoke privately with me, and explained the importance of just saying "I'm sorry."
On the second day, I listened to customers carefully, understood what pain we had caused, and then said "sumimasen." And had a great day. As soon as I said "sumimasen" - and meant it - customers were ready to forgive and figure out what to do about the problem. Twenty-three Fourteen years later, and I haven't been back to Japan since. And yet, I still remember that "sumimasen" means "I'm sorry." My customers needed to hear that before they could move on to problem solving.
Not surprisingly, the quality credit requests were much higher from those customers I saw on my first day. Where I had apologized, the credit claims were fairly minimal. But where I had not apologized, we paid six figure sums in recompense.
Lesson learned!
Now I know that a sincere apology is often necessary to maintain and grow a key relationship. A sincere apology shows a sense of responsibility and accountability, and helps restore trust. And it clears the air, allowing both parties to move on to problem solving.
How to say you're sorry and mean it
The following steps are drawn from my own experience, and from recent posts by Damone Virgilio, Mike Schaffner, and Justin Long;
- Start by listening and acknowledging the harm felt by the other party. Justin points out that listening carefully may be all that is required. And if not, listening carefully will at least result in a more sincere apology, because you will better understand the harm you have caused.
- Mike and Damone both point out that an apology must be timely. Don't make the aggrieved party wait for your apology, and don't make them wait while you get permission from those above you. Time only makes the wound fester and deepen.
- Mike suggests taking responsibility - owning the problem - and then explaining (but not excusing) the problem.
- Make amends - fix the problem for the customer. Damone reminds us that we should not make it the other party's job to fix the problem. The fix needs to fall 100 percent on us, and be painless for the customer.
- Damone reminds us to keep the lines of communication open, to ensure our solution really worked.
- Mike suggests looking beyond the immediate solution to ensure we have prevented repeat occurrences, and learned how to prevent similar problems elsewhere.
Let me close with a link to Phil Bernstein's story of the perfect apology. Make your apologies the way Tammy does in this story, and you will build loyal fans for life.
[Updated 3:35 pm CST on 12 Feb: Corrected my math on number of years since I was in Japan. Guess I don't get an "A" in math class today! Thanks to my friend Bob Leahey for pointing that out.]
