The Legal Ramifications of Saying “I’m Sorry”

Panel: Chris Morran – Senior Editor, Consumerist.com, Daniel Goldman – Legal Counsel, Mayo Clinic, Fred Taylor – Sr Mgr, Southwest Airlines, Margaret DiBianca – Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, and Moderator:  Paula Berg – Digital Media Leader, Linhart PR

Working in a highly regulated industry, I was very interested in this presentation.  The panel was incredible, with folks from the medical and airline fields, as well as a commentator from The Consumerist.com, and I was very excited about all of the panel members openness in the discussion.

Often, saying “I’m sorry,” means that you are admitting guilt, and subjecting yourself and your brand to the (legal) consequences of doing so.  Most members of the panel felt that you have to be purposeful and careful about the words you choose, expressing regret for the situation, without admitting wrongdoing.

Fred Taylor of Southwest Air said it’s important to apologize for their situation, not necessarily for why it happened.  However, their company is guided by the Golden Rule, and he feels it is important to say “sorry” because it’s the right thing to do, not just to appease the customer.  “It must be consistent, conversational, sincere,” Taylor says.   It can’t be a form letter or anything other than a personal, genuine apology.

Taylor continued, suggesting that in order to accomplish this, there must be a good internal structure, and good internal relationships to make this happen.  They need to quick and efficiently find out what happened, which often requires the assistance of individuals in several different areas of the company, across several different geographic locations.  Once they determine how to fix it, the action must be swift, also requiring the coordination of many people in many locations.  At Southwest Airlines, they had to establish internal communications channels to quickly communicate with everyone.

The challenges are similar for Daniel Goldman, legal counsel at the Mayo Clinic.  However, in a highly regulated environment, they have to be transparent with information without revealing any patient information.  This can be a challenge for the 4-5 people on their social media staff who communicate with patients who want to talk about their situations in a social media forum.  They try to take the conversation “offline,” into more secure environments.  However, they’ll use their corporate blog to give a more complete story of “common situations,” without personally identifiable information.  However, they are very transparent that they are doing this to hide personally identifiable information.

Many of the panelists found that people wanted to air their grievances in public, but they don’t want to have the conversation to resolve it there.  Our Twitter and Facebook society is changing the culture of customer complaints, says Chris Morran of The Consumerist.com.  He says, today, everyone just wants to go out there and complain, and companies used to be able to put people in one of two categories – “nut cases” (who will never be happy) and “legitimate, serious complaints” (which can be resolved).  Now, as more people just want to post in a moment of frustration, it’s hard for companies to tell what kind of resolution the person is hoping for.

Morran felt that companies should, by default, begin with an apology.  He followed up with the question, “how many complaints actually result in a lawsuit?”  Taylor said the point for Southwest Airlines is to keep them as a customer, not to stay out of a courtroom.  Southwest has found that this attitude has lead to a majority of customers who complained, actually came back and flew with them again.  Taylor felt that it’s important for companies to track the longer term results of saying “I’m sorry.”  Often times brands try to protect themselves from a lawsuit to the detriment of their brand.  As one panelist pointed out – “Is it better to lose a million dollar lawsuit or lose money from the bad press a situation could cause? (see speculative example from The Consumerist.com here)

It’s also important to react to a complaint as quickly as possible.  Southwest’s research has shown that the quicker you can contact them and resolve the issue, the better the person responds.  This research helped to build the case for the internal communications structure they required, mentioned earlier.  In fact, according to Taylor, he doesn’t believe customers should contact Southwest.  He wants their system/infrustructure to be so effective that they can respond proactively.  He used Netflix as an example – when they proactively offered a refund to customers when their streaming service was going to be down for upgrades.  It turned into positive press for the company.

While addressing customer complaints quickly is important, you have to be very careful – especially in social media – about the  expectation that you set about resolving complaints.  “Don’t set an expectation that you can’t deliver on,” says Taylor.  “Under promise and over deliver – always. ”

One thing all the panelists could agree on, is the importance of hiring the right people, training them appropriately, and empowering them to deal with situations immediately.  At Southwest, they make sure to hire “people, peole,” train them, and empower them to follow the golden rule.  According to Taylor, “Our values teach people how to deal with situations.”  Be genuine, avoid scripts, and train your front line people.  Everyone has to be prepared to deal with customer situations.

Other important lessons from the panelists included:

• Avoid taking down information, even if it seems harmless.  Even the Consumerist.com has been accused by readers of trying to “cover up” things.
• Be sure to clearly post your standards and explain, in advance, what will and won’t be taken down.  When things are taken down, explain the policy which was violated.
• It’s OK to respond right away with a “give me a little bit to go look into it,” but you have to actually do it.
• A few times a year, be a customer of your own company… the lessons will help you relate to the customer.

Slashing Red Tape to Revolutionize Corporate Communications

Presenter: Paula Berg – linhartpr.com – formerly at Southwest Airlines

When Paula Berg started in the customer service area at Southwest Airlines, she never thought she’d end up where she did – with a seven personal social media team.  She started doing some of the social media stuff on the side and made it her goal to integrate social media into every internal and external communication effort in a way that made sense for the community and brand.  She offered five tips for inspiring organization change and helping both the organization and its executives to “get it.”

1. Make jaw-dropping reports – Don’t just focus on the numbers and great looking charts (although great design helps).  Be sure to thoroughly evaluate what the numbers mean, especially in terms of your business and communications goals (make sure they care about the results).  Include what you learned and your intended next steps to do things differently.

2. Launch an Internal PR Assault – People can’t just hear about social media, they have to live it.  Insert social media into every newsletter, magazine, mailer, department update, every meeting, lucheon, summit, etc.

3. Make your executives love it – Make sure you dazzel them, scare them, hypnotize them, and whatever you have to do to get them to understand and appreciate social media.  They need to understand that the risk of not going into it is greater than the risk of doing it.

4. Get your house in order – Social media is more than just PR and/or marketing.  It’s about engaging with consumers when/how they want.  This requires speed, agility, and trusted employees who know the business.  Too often companies try to hand this job over to the “young guns” – the interns or first year people – who must know social media.  It’s better to get people who know your culture implicitly and teach them how to use the tools to communicate.

5. Get tough – It’s a new world, and it’s not going to be easy.  You have to be willing to fight and you have to be willing to take risks and be wrong.  No matter what, things are going to fail, or things will go wrong, and you have to be ready and willing to personally take it on the chin for your company.

Customer Service Goes Social

Presenter: Melanie Baker, Postrank

Technology has increased consumers’ expectations for speed and response, and companies have to adapt to provide the level of customer service that’s now expected of them.  Customer service tends to be a bottleneck simply because the amount of people who are “assigned” to do this is limited – there’s typically a “customer service center” or “response center.”  While these are certainly necessarily for efficient business, company cultures must change so that everyone is a customer services advocate.  Even if they can’t directly help or answer the questions, customers want to know that they are being dealt with personally and with sincerity – no matter how they decide to contact you (phone, Twitter, email, etc.).

Baker suggests starting by having everyone in your company go through the same training as the “customer service” people.  Even if it isn’t “in their job” to handle customer service, they need to be prepared to do so if the situation presents itself.  Provide education and resources on how to handle situations.  Opening up this information to everyone in the company – rather than limiting access to it – makes for a more customer-centric organization.  And as consumers take to talking about your company in social media, everyone is prepared to assist (when appropriate), and it’s not just shoved off to “the people whose job it is,” – great customer service should be everyone’s job.