It’s Your Business
- Author: Terry Greenhut, Business Editor
- Subject Matter: Management
- Issue: Handling mistakes
How your business can improve by admitting to mistakes
Mistakes are a fact of life. No matter how much you try, you can’t completely avoid making them. They can be costly but they shouldn’t cost you your customers if you handle them well. In fact, they can actually help to improve your shop’s effectiveness and reputation if you take great care whenever they occur.
It seems our society has turned shirking responsibility into an art form. From celebrities who insist that a brush with the law was all a big misunderstanding to political figures who use spin and double-talk to blame everything on the other side, no one wants to admit it when they mess up. If you’re the owner or manager of an auto-repair business who is trying to compete in a very tight marketplace the temptation to use this strategy is huge. After all, your customers are paying you to get it right, so the last thing you want is for them to know that you’ve made a mistake, right?
Well, maybe not. When your company admits to mistakes in a constructive way, you won’t damage your good name in the way you feared. In fact, you have a valuable opportunity to gain respect and loyalty.
You and your company are judged not by how well you do when you’re good but by how well you do when you’re bad. Customers have come to expect perfection from the goods and services they buy. They believe that if they pay their money everything should be right the first time. (I guess they haven’t bought a new computer lately.) But that aside, they do expect everything else – including your repair service – to be flawless. When it isn’t, they are understandably upset. Let’s be honest; you would be too. The way you handle this upset customer makes all the difference.
At this point it’s no longer about the price they paid or the technical expertise you claimed to have when you sold them the job. Now it’s only about making it right as quickly as possible and at the same time restoring that “warm and fuzzy feeling” they had when they thought everything had gone well. The fact is, everyone and every company make mistakes. Lying about or denying that they happened, refusing to take responsibility for them or stalling the process of making it right in any way usually exacerbates and magnifies an already awkward situation, because chances are that you aren’t fooling anyone and you appear to be exactly how you are acting: insincere. So even if you are going to make good on all your promises, this attitude of “It ain’t my fault” is so detrimental to your company’s mission because it creates an almost unrecoverable error.
You can’t take back the words you’ve said, but worse, you can’t take back your attitude. Once the customer sees your lack of concern for the urgency of their problem or your disgust at having to redo the work your shop has already done, you’re cooked. In fact, in a very real way, trying to dodge responsibility can hurt your reputation more than simply owning up to the mistake in the first place.
Honestly and humbly admitting to missteps often diffuses a tense situation instead of exacerbating it. And as time passes people tend to remember more clearly how you handled the mistake as opposed to what it was. If you’re ready to face up to your company’s mistakes and turn them into building blocks, here are five suggestions on handling your next business “my bad”:
Cop to it. Yes, it’s uncomfortable to admit that you or your company did something wrong. It involves swallowing your pride and acknowledging that you are not, in fact, perfect (which is an illusion that our culture encourages us to zealously cultivate). But the sooner you admit to the error, the more you reduce the drama, and the faster you can move on to the next, more-important stage: what you are going to do about the situation.
People don’t actually mind a little imperfection now and then. It demonstrates a level of authenticity, vulnerability and humanity with which we all can identify. Plus, it’s harder to be angry with someone who says, “You’re right; I messed up,” than with someone who insists the fault doesn’t lie with him, even though you know it does. And it’s difficult, if not downright impossible, to make any constructive progress if the responsible party refuses to admit there’s a problem.
Recognize how it happened. If you admit fault but don’t do anything to find out what caused the problem and how it can be avoided in the future, guess what? You’ve just increased the chances that it will happen again. It’s very important to investigate how and why an error occurred so that you can fix the faulty procedure or process. That’s why it’s critical that you develop an open culture in your shop where people are not afraid to report or admit to mistakes.
One good way to handle an employee who’s made a mistake is to take him/her aside and say (with a big smile on your face), “Congratulations! You found a new way to screw up, and that’s a good thing. We didn’t know that this could happen, but now that it has, we can keep it from happening again.” Then brainstorm what went wrong and make technical adjustments. I think one of the worst things you can do is to penalize employees for making honest mistakes. Most often those mistakes are training issues that need to be addressed. People rarely screw up because they want to. It happens because they don’t know or are unsure of a process. Find out what they don’t know and train them on it. Real progress in growing a business is often built on the mistakes and the improvements they spark.
Aim, don’t blame. What happens when you can trace a mistake to an outside vendor or manufacturer? Although it’s easy (and temporarily satisfying) to point your finger and say, “Not my fault!” the truth is, if it happened on your watch and you are accountable for the finished product, you ultimately share the blame in the customer’s eyes. In this situation, get to the bottom of what happened and focus on what you can do on your end to prevent the situation from recurring.
Write it down. If you successfully resolve a negative situation that was sparked by an error, then rub your hands together and continue with business as usual as if to say, “Yes, it happened, but it’s all cleaned up now,” then you’re making a second misstep. If you don’t write down what happened and how to avoid it, even you are in danger of making the same mistake again. You need to write down the fixes for oddball problems not only so that you can refer to them in the future but also so that others can handle the problem if you aren’t around. When you are still smarting in the immediate aftermath of a fiasco, it’s easy to assume that you will always remember what you did wrong and that it will never happen a second time. But often, as life goes on and your focus inevitably shifts to other things, your memory can get fuzzy. Or you might fall back into old habits unconsciously. And you certainly can’t pass your own experiences to everyone else in your company through osmosis. That’s why it’s crucial to take the lessons you learn and physically make them part of your company’s policies. This might mean writing a new procedure, checklist or sign-off sheet, but whatever you do, write it down!
Resolve that it won’t recur. Along with your apology, assure the injured parties that it – whatever “it” was – won’t happen again. Voluntarily describe how the mistake happened and what changes you are implementing to prevent its recurrence. Most important, tell the customer how you are going to make things right. Most people will appreciate your thoughtfulness, your resolve and the action you are taking. And often, handling an error in this way will reinforce the fact that you are, ultimately, a trustworthy company that can be relied upon.
Make sure it’s right this time. Admitting to your mistakes, as we know, can be good for business, but making too many of them isn’t – especially when you make more of them on the same customer’s car. When you have a comeback, the second-biggest mistake you can make, other than refusing to fix it, is to have the car go out a second time and come back again with the same problem. Customers might tolerate it once, but when it happens again they really think you don’t know what you’re doing. Then all the apologies in the world aren’t going to help. Take your time. Make sure it’s right. Put the customer in a rental car and keep his/hers until you’re absolutely sure the problem has been solved. Remember: “Good enough is never good enough in this type of situation. Perfect is the only acceptable outcome.”
Don’t put the comeback on the back burner. Although we know that comebacks often involve technical issues that take time to resolve and sometimes tie up more of your manpower, you can’t put those trouble cars on the back of the line. The issues have to be resolved, and the sooner the better. The longer that trouble car is in the shop the more distracted all the technicians become, which can lead to additional comebacks and lack of productivity. So you need to get them done and out of the shop. Looking at it from the customer’s side, he or she has paid for this repair but hasn’t seen any benefit from it. That, in itself, should be reason enough for you to give them top-priority treatment, because they deserve it. After all, it isn’t their fault the car came back. They dealt with you in good faith. Now you must do the same.
Again, mistakes are bound to happen, even if you’re an established shop, and especially if you’re a newer one. So don’t waste time and energy beating yourself up, and especially don’t try to create the illusion that you’re perfect. Remember, what people recall most of all is how you handle missteps and errors, not what they were, so don’t miss out on these golden opportunities to show your integrity, reduce the drama and improve the way your business operates. That is how you make mistakes right.
You and your company are judged not by how well you do when you’re good but by how well you do when you’re bad.
Honestly and humbly admitting to missteps often diffuses a tense situation instead of exacerbating it.
