Several weeks ago, I wrote a blog about a New York Times article on apologizing and how to do so like you mean it. The article notes that an apology has to be carefully orchestrated and contain certain elements for it to be effective: express regret, explain but keep it brief; acknowledge any harm you caused, state that you will not do it again, offer to recompense or repair as necessary and ask for forgiveness. (Id.)
I return to this subject as I have just received a perfect example of how not to apologize and because the apology is so inept, it has even made me angrier than before I received it.
Every Wednesday morning, our dogs have a standing appointment. For more than a year, we have had an appointment at 8:00 a.m. When we walked in this morning, we were told that our appointment had been changed to 9:00 a.m. Obviously we did not know and expressed this to the staff. I even commented that I went by the front desk as were leaving last week to make an appointment for this week for one of the dogs and nothing was said to me about the change. The only response was that they sent an e mail to my husband who did not open it as he assumed it was simply confirming our standard appointment and that they sent me an email last week entitled “receipt” which I should opened and seen on pages 3-4 a different time slot for this week in small print!)
So, we left, and this email arrived shortly thereafter:
Apologize for your confusion on today’s appt. We informed you last week that this week we didn’t have an acupuncturist and that the 8am appt was already booked (since we only had one column today) and that the only time we could do was 9am which you approved.
Please do not assume that your appointments are always at 8am. Yes, they usually are, but every once in a while they may not be under circumstances like this week. We send our appointment reminders as a double check for clients so that they know their appointment time so I suggest reading them when they arrive.
The email begins simply with the single word ”apologize”- not even a sentence. But then it apologizes for MY confusion, not for the apologizer’s action. It is putting the blame on me, as though this is my fault. It does not really express regret.
The next element- explaining- is more of a justification of what they did right and what I did wrong. (As an aside, they did not advise me of the change when I was there last week!) The email goes to great lengths to justify the company’s actions and pin the mistake on me.
There is no acknowledgment of harm such as something to the effect that they understand that we were inconvenienced or were put out by this change. There is certainly no comment to the effect that they will do their utmost to make sure it does not happen again and/or they will be sure to call us when there is a sudden change or implement some other policy to ensure that we know of the change.
And certainly, there is no offer to compensate us although on my way out of the door, I told them that under no circumstances were they to charge us a cancellation fee.
And last but not least, there is no request for forgiveness.
Instead, the next paragraph is admonishing us for our mistake in assuming that we have a standing appointment at 8:00 a.m. and for not reading our emails. (Notably the subject line of the emails simply says “receipt” or “appointment reminder” rather than actually stating the time of the appointment!) Again, pinning all of the blame on us as if we are wholly at fault.
To say the least, this e mail does not make for good customer relations. More importantly, I wonder where the company’s priorities are in that as we have been coming every Wednesday for over a year, why aren’t WE given the priority of the 8:00 a.m. appointment so that others are told this time slot is not available? I would think that any company would want to stay in the good graces of a long-standing customer and give them a little respect.
Instead, we get this inept apology which makes the situation worse.
The moral: if you are going to apologize, be very careful how you do it. A bad apology will only make the situation worse.
…. Just something to think about.
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