The Way We Deliver Bad News Matters More Than the News Itself

A long-time client of ours left a three-star Google review yesterday with some pointed complaints about the service. 

He had a roadside issue and called us for help. The first team member he reached gave him accurate information but didn't actually solve the problem. He had already tried what she was telling him to try, and it wasn't working. He asked for a supervisor. He was transferred to a second team member, who asked the right questions, made the call he needed someone to make, and got the issue resolved. 

But by the time the second call ended, the experience was already broken. The fix happened, but the relationship was bruised. That's how the bad review showed up. 

When I saw it, I dropped what I was doing and started digging in. I listened to the recording of his first call. Then I listened to the second. I pulled up his account, read through his history with us, and got the full picture before I did anything else. Once I understood what actually happened, I called him directly. Apologized. Walked through what we got wrong and what we were going to do about it. Gave him my direct line for anything going forward. He agreed to update the review before we got off the phone. 

• Three things I'm taking away from this. 

• First, you have to jump on these situations the moment they happen. Not the next morning, not after you finish what you're working on. The window to repair the relationship closes fast, and the longer you wait, the harder it is to make it feel personal instead of procedural. But jumping on it doesn't mean reacting fast. It means understanding fast. I needed the full picture before I picked up the phone, otherwise I'd be apologizing for something I didn't actually understand. 

• Second, solving the problem isn't the same as saving the relationship. The second team member did her job and got the issue resolved. The review still came in, because by then the customer had already decided how he felt about us. That's the part that owners have to handle personally. The team can fix what's in front of them. Repairing trust is a different job. 

• Third, the way we tell people we can't help them is more important than the fact that we can't help them. There's a Simon Sinek clip about an airline customer who couldn't get his flight changed. Same outcome, two completely different experiences, depending on whether the agent tried or just said no. Sometimes we genuinely can't fix the problem. But the customer should always feel like we tried. 

I've been doing this long enough to know that the agencies that survive aren't the ones that never mess up. They're the ones that recover well when they do.

Watch the Sinek clip HERE