A bit of PR can go a long way
Everyone makes mistakes, and although the public is quick to punish they’re also quick to forgive if you truly show you understand your error and are working to correct it. An email we received from the spice purveyors at Penzeys showed a great understanding of this fact, an example we wanted to share with you:
This has been a breakthrough year for us, but along the way there have been a few glitches. At times the things I’ve done have crashed our website, overwhelmed our ability to get mail orders out the door or, with the Curry/Cocoa weekend, caused far more people to visit our stores than we thought possible. I really am sorry. We really don’t want anyone to have a bad experience.So to try and make it up to you, here’s a free half cup jar of your choice. To make sure I don’t overwhelm everyone here, once again we’ve made this “with $10 spending” and excluded Vanilla & Saffron items and Extracts. Still, if you are coming in to pick up a few things for Thanksgiving I’m hoping this will help.Simply bring the coupon below to one of our stores. Or visit us online at Penzeys.com
Spend a minimum of $10, select the coupon item you’d like to receive by entering the SKU number into the coupon code field, followed by the letter C. Example: 12345C. It’s easy.
And even if you missed all the glitches, please feel free to use this coupon. Our growth seems to be accelerating, so just in case another glitch arrives we’ll have you covered 🙂
Thanks for being our customer, Bill
bill@penzeys.com
Demonstrating you know what went wrong, making amends that are equal to the difficulty your issues placed on stakeholders, and communicating it all in a clear and upfront manner. Sometimes, it really is that simple.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]
– See more at: http://managementhelp.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/10/30/zendaya-modeliste-and-a-lesson-in-reputation-management/#sthash.szASmeNx.dpuf
Jonathan L. Bernstein, founder and Chairman of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. has more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of crisis management – crisis response, vulnerability assessment, planning, training and simulations.
Erik Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management. Erik started with BCM in 2009 as a writer and subsequently became social media manager for the consultancy itself as well as for a number of BCM clients before moving to the president position.