There’s more power in these words than you might imagine.
Most customers understand, and even expect, some mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. What frustrates people isn’t the mistake, it’s the justification, the refusal to acknowledge the error, or the compounding of the error.
Simply telling customers that you’ll make it right and then doing so makes a huge difference.
Customers will forgive almost anything when companies are open and honest about their mistakes and willing to make up for them.
Unfortunately, most companies don’t practice this. Instead, customer service reps deny, disambiguate, and cite “policy” to excuse company errors. Then the executive team is surprised when customer loyalty decreases.