Again Let Me Apologize Again for This Ridiculously Longer

by Leslie O'Flahavan
August 15, 2017

In that location are about 1 chiliad varieties of insincere apology. There'due south the smirking "Sorry if yous were offended" amends which blames the person yous insulted. There's the oblique, passive voice "Mistakes were made" apology that admits zilch. Naught! And there's the undercutting "If I did something wrong, I'yard sorry" apology that doesn't even accept that something worth beingness sad for actually happened.

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

When you piece of work in client support, an insincere apology can backfire.

Sometimes, when things become wrong, when you are to blame for a problem, or when a client is rightfully aggrieved, all you tin can offer is an apology, so you really must learn to do it correct. Hither are three tips for writing a heartfelt apology to a customer.

Tip i: End Writing, "We regret any inconvenience this may have caused…"

Let'south say you work in customer support for a cable service provider nosotros'll telephone call ComFinity. A customer, Susan, uses live chat (at her office) to let you lot know that her cable at home hasn't been working since the thunderstorm ii days ago, and she'south upset considering she missed the season finale of her favorite show, The Vox.

A typical response from the support annotator, David, might go like this:

Hello Susan. Cheers for contacting ComFinity Live Chat Back up. My name is David. Please give me ane moment to review your information. I regret any inconvenience this outage may have caused you, merely I'll be more than than happy to resolve it for you lot...

End right in that location! Don't write an apology similar, "We regret whatever inconvenience this may have caused…" First, "may have" sounds antagonistic. Conspicuously, this event did cause inconvenience; there'south no "may have" about it. Second, "any" is generic. ComFinity knows what kind of inconvenience is involved when a customer misses a favorite show. Third, nosotros would never say this to a customer in person. If you would never say something to a customer contiguous, don't write it. If Susan were complaining nigh wearisome response to an outage to a ComFinity employee in the shop, that employee would never await Susan in the eye and say, "We regret whatever inconvenience this may have caused…" so ComFinity should avert this wording in its chats and emails.

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

Cheers for contacting us about the outage. We're actually distressing well-nigh the inconvenience of missing the season finale of The Voice. We would like to practise some troubleshooting to solve the problem. Do you accept fourth dimension to exercise that now or would afterwards this evening work better?

Tip 2: Pair "I'g sorry we..." with "We should accept…"

Apologizing to a client is about taking responsibleness for a bad or disappointing affair that'due south happened. It's likewise almost validating the customer's perspective, seeing things from the client's point of view. Then, it's OK if you lay information technology on a bit thick. Sometimes a wronged customer needs a little extra.

One approach to writing your apology is to pair the I'grand sorry office with mention of what should have happened or what you should have done. Here are a few examples:

• I'grand sorry we gave you lot the incorrect information about how to update your online account. We should have checked first to see whether y'all had a Vendor business relationship or a Supplier account.
• We're sad that y'all had problem finding the images you had stored on StockFoto. We should take allow yous and our other Platinum Bundle customers know that we were updating our database, so our online library had some glitches yesterday.
• I'k distressing we took then long to respond to your asking to update your expired VPN certificate, especially because y'all were at a customer's site, not in your office. We should have gotten back to you within an hr, which is our standard response time.

Tip iii: Follow Your Amends with an Empathy Statement.

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

• I'm sorry you've had to contact us four times to request that your electronic mail accost be removed from our distribution listing. I, too, would accept expected this task to be taken intendance of after the outset request.
• We sincerely apologize that your daughter had to wait two hours for our airport shuttle to arrive. As a parent myself, I would not take been happy that my kid was stuck at the drome for a long fourth dimension.
• Nosotros're distressing our software update wasn't compatible with your laptop's operating organization. I can understand why y'all desire to revert to the previous version.

Say You Are Sorry

Don't pepper your client communications with wanton apologies. Don't say you lot're sad for anything and everything. But when you've made a fault, forced a customer to cope with an inefficient system, caused a delay, or given a customer incorrect information, say yous're sorry. Information technology's the right thing to practise, and it makes your customers trust you.

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Leslie O'Flahavan has delivered writing courses for support heart staff, customer service agents, and social media managers, helping thousands of professionals hone their customer-focused writing skills. She helps back up 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, Concise E-mail: A Writing Workbook for Customer Service Agents. Visit her E-Write website , follow her on Twitter , or connect with her on LinkedIn .

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Tag(s): supportworld , support centre , workforce enablement , customer feel , customer 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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