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Again We Apologize for the Inconvenience Wont Happen Again

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past Leslie O'Flahavan
August 15, 2017

There are most ane thousand varieties of insincere amends. There's the smirking "Lamentable if you were offended" apology which blames the person you insulted. There's the oblique, passive voice "Mistakes were made" apology that admits nothing. Zip! And at that place'due south the undercutting "If I did something wrong, I'k sorry" amends that doesn't even accept that something worth being sorry for really happened.

If y'all are an otherwise sincere person, your close relationships can probably survive a scattering of insincere apologies. Proverb "Sad, Non Sorry" a few times won't brand your mom or your spouse write you lot off. But when yous work in customer support, an insincere apology can really backlash. Information technology tin can make an angry customer angrier. A "nonpology" can squander the rapport you lot have worked then hard to build with your customers.

When you work in customer support, an insincere apology tin can backfire.
Tweet: When you work in customer support, an insincere apology can backfire. #custserv @LeslieO @ThinkHDI

Sometimes, when things go incorrect, when you are to blame for a problem, or when a customer is rightfully aggrieved, all you can offering is an apology, so you really must learn to do information technology right. Here are three tips for writing a heartfelt apology to a customer.

Tip 1: Stop Writing, "Nosotros regret any inconvenience this may take caused…"

Let'southward say yous work in customer support for a cable service provider we'll call ComFinity. A customer, Susan, uses live chat (at her part) to let you know that her cable at habitation hasn't been working since the thunderstorm two days agone, and she's upset because she missed the season finale of her favorite testify, The Vocalization.

A typical response from the support analyst, David, might become like this:

Hello Susan. Give thanks you lot for contacting ComFinity Live Conversation Back up. My name is David. Delight give me i moment to review your data. I regret any inconvenience this outage may have caused you lot, but I'll exist more than than happy to resolve information technology for you...

Terminate correct there! Don't write an apology like, "We regret whatever inconvenience this may accept caused…" First, "may accept" sounds antagonistic. Clearly, this event did crusade inconvenience; at that place's no "may accept" about it. 2d, "any" is generic. ComFinity knows what kind of inconvenience is involved when a customer misses a favorite evidence. Tertiary, we would never say this to a customer in person. If you lot would never say something to a client contiguous, don't write it. If Susan were complaining about boring response to an outage to a ComFinity employee in the store, that employee would never wait Susan in the centre and say, "Nosotros regret any inconvenience this may have caused…" so ComFinity should avoid this wording in its chats and emails.

What should you write instead of, "We regret any inconvenience this may take caused…"? One reliable strategy is to name the inconvenience and admit that it happened. Here'south a revised version of the ComFinity response to Susan:

Thank you for contacting us about the outage. We're actually lamentable about the inconvenience of missing the flavor finale of The Vocalization. We would like to practice some troubleshooting to solve the trouble. Do you lot accept time to practice that now or would later this evening work better?

Tip 2: Pair "I'1000 sad nosotros..." with "We should accept…"

Apologizing to a client is about taking responsibility for a bad or disappointing affair that's happened. Information technology's also most validating the customer'southward perspective, seeing things from the client's point of view. So, information technology's OK if y'all lay information technology on a fleck thick. Sometimes a wronged customer needs a fiddling extra.

I approach to writing your amends is to pair the I'thou sorry part with mention of what should have happened or what you should have done. Hither are a few examples:

  • I'g sorry we gave you the wrong data about how to update your online account. We should accept checked offset to see whether you had a Vendor account or a Supplier business relationship.
  • We're sorry that you had trouble finding the images you lot had stored on StockFoto. We should accept let you and our other Platinum Parcel customers know that we were updating our database, so our online library had some glitches yesterday.
  • I'm sorry we took so long to answer to your asking to update your expired VPN certificate, peculiarly because you were at a client's site, non in your office. We should take gotten back to you within an hour, which is our standard response time.

Tip 3: Follow Your Apology with an Empathy Statement.

A sincere apology earns points with an unhappy client, and if you follow it with an empathy statement, you earn lots of points. Information technology's hard to tell which part soothes the client more. Is information technology the amends, in which you take responsibility for the wrongdoing? Or is it the empathy argument, in which you lot see the situation from the customer's point of view? No matter. Amends-plus-empathy is the cookies-and-milk of customer care. Here are a few examples of this constructive pairing:

  • I'm deplorable you've had to contact us 4 times to request that your email address be removed from our distribution listing. I, as well, would accept expected this task to exist taken care of afterwards the first request.
  • Nosotros sincerely apologize that your daughter had to wait two hours for our airport shuttle to get in. Equally a parent myself, I would non take been happy that my kid was stuck at the airdrome for a long time.
  • Nosotros're sorry our software update wasn't compatible with your laptop's operating arrangement. I tin can understand why you want to revert to the previous version.

Say Y'all Are Deplorable

Don't pepper your client communications with wanton apologies. Don't say you're sorry for annihilation and everything. Merely when you've made a error, forced a customer to cope with an inefficient arrangement, acquired a delay, or given a client incorrect information, say yous're sorry. It'southward the right thing to do, and it makes your customers trust you.

Leslie O'Flahavan has delivered writing courses for support center staff, customer service agents, and social media managers, helping thousands of professionals hone their client-focused writing skills. She helps support organizations train agents to write well in all service channels, mensurate the quality of their writing, and revise and maintain their entire library of canned answers. Leslie is the coauthor of Articulate, Correct, Curtailed Email: A Writing Workbook for Client Service Agents. Visit her E-Write website , follow her on Twitter , or connect with her on LinkedIn .

Tag(s): supportworld , back up centre , workforce enablement , client experience , client service

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Source: https://www.thinkhdi.com/library/supportworld/2017/nonpologies-apologize-to-customers-like-you-mean-it.aspx

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