Minutes after hitting the “send” button on yesterday’s post, in which I reported on my efforts to resolve an apparent error on our part, we developed a process improvement in our systems which will cost no additional money, create little if any stress, and ensure that additional eyes can review the final drafts of our pubications before we go to press.
Then Chase called me to deliver some rather stunningly obvious evidence that, if we had made a mistake on this file, we only were acting with the client’s consent, understanding and our customer’s own actions and decisions to encourage the error.
In other words, we weren’t really responsible for the mistake.
Does this faulty assumption of responsibility for errors which are not ours ever happen in businesses with a solid client-service ethos? “I know you are right,” I told Chase after he delivered the evidence. “But you know as well as I that when we have a situation where the client complains, the default response is to agree something is wrong and then work on solving the problem — at least when the correction doesn’t really cost us much if any money.”
Chase certainly understands this perspective. The response to the perceived problem will cost just a few hundred dollars and, as I noted in yesterday’s posting (written before I had the evidence in hand), result in process improvements within our own business. In this case, we learned from a mistake that wasn’t ours in the first place.
In the past, we’ve even repaired errors from our competitors. These fix-it projects are gratifying and rather enjoyable, especially when we calm irate clients who acknowledge at the outset that the problems are not our fault. The solutions almost inevitably are true wins for us business-wise as you really win loyalty points when you help out when you do the right thing to solve others’ wrongs.
Still, we need to respect our employees and it can be demoralizing, to say the least, for the company to fall on its sword for an “error” that we never made in the first place.
