Today, we’ll discuss the elements of truly great apologies–with examples. And see what we can learn from the experience I had recently apologizing to thousands of confused, angry, and irritated customers…

Apologies Ranked

Seth Godin’s blog ranks corporate apologies on a 1-10 scale, with #1 being “You can always take your business elsewhere” (ouch) to #10 being “We’re so sorry… we’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again… how can we make it up to you?”

It’s a good list, although I think some core elements are missing. Saying you’re sorry isn’t enough. Neither is correcting the problem. You also need to take responsibility and offer concrete next steps to regain the customers’ trust.

Core Elements To A Great Apology

What are the core elements to a great apology?

Sincerely Apologize

So many businesses seem afraid to say “I’m sorry” because they’re afraid of the liability of owning the mistake or of potentially damaging their brands. Maybe that’s a legitimate concern, sometimes. Other times, the best policy is sincerity.

When Amazon removed copies of 1984 by George Orwell from Kindles across the land, there was no hiding it, and people complained. The response from Jeff Bezos was quick and apparently heartfelt:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

This may not allay consumer fears about digital products or satisfy every affected consumer, but the gesture went a long way to assuaging customer opinion.

Explain What Happened

In September, Gmail suffered an hour+ outage. Google posted an entry in the Gmail blog acknowledging the problems and, later, a post explaining what went wrong and what they intend to do about it.

Gmail’s web interface had a widespread outage earlier today, lasting about 100 minutes. We know how many people rely on Gmail for personal and professional communications, and we take it very seriously when there’s a problem with the service. Thus, right up front, I’d like to apologize to all of you — today’s outage was a Big Deal, and we’re treating it as such. We’ve already thoroughly investigated what happened, and we’re currently compiling a list of things we intend to fix or improve as a result of the investigation. Here’s what happened…

Acknowledge The Customer’s Feelings

When Apple slashed the price of the iPhone just a few months after it went on sale in 2007, early adopters were irate. Steve Jobs offered a personal note that doesn’t exactly exude warmth, but does acknowledge his customers’ feelings, explain the reality of price cuts in consumer electronics, and promise a $100 store credit to affected early adopters.

Even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Offer Appropriate Compensation

Last month, T-Mobile Sidekick customers suffered a week-long data outage–and, on top of that, potentially lost data stored in “the cloud”. As part of its apology plan, T-Mobile offered affected customers a $50 credit plus a $100 customer appreciation card.

When the Men’s Wearhouse in Portland ran out of stock for a certain item, the manager ordered the item at the sale price on behalf of a customer trying to take advantage of the last day of the sale. When the item failed to arrive on the appointed day, the manager hand-delivered the item to the customer’s house that night, no extra charge.

Sometimes, compensation means money. Sometimes it means blood, sweat, and tears–or, at least mileage.

Promise To Do Better

When wild winter weather helped disrupt JetBlue service, the airline could have apologized for the inconvenience and hid behind the stormfront. Instead, CEO David Neeleman went public with a video apology where he promised to do better–even offering a new, official commitment to customers explaining how JetBlue will handle operational interruptions going forward. They promised to do better, and meant it.

Of course, if you can’t promise to do better, maybe you can make a custom 404 that develops its own cult-like following and eases customer complaints. (Maybe. But not likely.)

And Now… The Rest Of The Story

As we all know, I have a spotty record when it comes to customer apologies. Early last week, I was given a new opportunity apologize to thousands of people affected by a lengthy overnight outage at the product I manage.

Here’s what I said:

We’re deeply sorry and embarrassed about the service interruption many of you experienced last night, into this morning.

Starting at around six o’clock eastern time on October 26, the Gamesville database entered an unstable state. No data was lost, but Gold status was not properly recognized across the site, GV Rewards values were incorrect or missing, and game rooms were no longer available for anyone (free members or Gold members) to play in. Internal monitoring failed to alert us to the situation so the problem persisted into this morning. Once the problem was identified, we immediately began working to fix the problem, and posting messages on the Gamesville Blog to update you on our progress and answer questions. Gamesville was fully functional by nine-thirty this morning, but that’s little comfort to people who wanted to play in the hours before then and couldn’t.

There aren’t words to express how sorry we are for the frustration, concern, and disruption that we caused. At Gamesville, odds are great, you’ll have fun time — relaxing, hanging with friends, winning a prize you’ve always wanted. Last night, we failed to deliver, and that needs to change. That will change.

We are taking immediate actions to regain your confidence. More comprehensive monitoring is being installed to better recognize and alert us to problems, and help mitigate or prevent such outages in the future. We are also working on a more extensive communications plan to provide timely information to you, in a more convenient way. As a result, Gamesville will prove to be more reliable and responsive to you than ever before.

You deserved more than what you got from us last night. Everyone here at Gamesville hopes you’ll give us the chance to welcome you back into our game rooms again and provide you with the positive experiences you’ve come to expect.

If you have any comments or questions about what happened last night, or anything at all, please feel comfortable posting here or contacting me at my personal email address.

Sincerely,
Chris Cummings
Manager, Gamesville.com

I’m hesitant to lump this in with “great business apologies”, but the response to what I said was pretty outstanding–and, for that, I’m deeply appreciative.

I know some of my peers at other companies would probably fob all this off: It’s just games, after all; it’s not like anyone’s lives were actually affected. And that attitude drives me batty.

Between emails and phone calls and social media, we received literally thousands upon thousands of messages about this outage. I listened to those calls, and personally read and responded to the many messages in my in-box. I could feel what my customers were feeling. This service is important to them–more important than even I realized–and we owe it to them to make sure it’s there.

We’re lucky to have a strong community on the site to help us get through events like this. Now, we must live up to the commitments we’ve made to make things better. Despite our–or any business’–best efforts, outages and mistakes will happen from time to time; our job is to make things right, and make sure we prevent those same mistakes from ever happening again.

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Brought to you by the marketing department at Pepsi

Business school didn’t teach me the art and science of how to apologize appropriately and effectively. (That’s something life and server outages have drilled into me.) Judging from some of the corporate apologies we’ve seen recently, we all have a lot still to learn.

Today, we’ll look at three examples of truly terrible ways to apologize. Next time, we’ll discuss the elements of a truly great apology–and see if the major outage we had this week on the product I lead yields any lessons that could benefit product managers who finds themselves in a similar situation.

Outages Happen

As Ben at MailChimp points out, server problems are embarrassing, interruptive, and happen to everybody. The question is, how to properly address them…

Some Truly Terrible Ways To Say, “I’m Sorry”

What makes up a truly terrible apology?

Inappropriate Tone

Hosting service Dreamhost accidentally over-billed nearly all of its customers in early 2008. This made their customers angry. Josh at Dreamhost blogged about the problem once it was uncovered, and provided a very detailed recount of what had happened. But chose a humorous tone in his apology, which–not surprisingly–didn’t sit well with over-billed customers who wanted to be taken seriously.

Hint: Any time you plan to include a picture of Homer Simpson with your apology — that’s a strong indicator that you’re heading for #apologyfail.

Hashtag

Pepsi released an iPhone app recently that helped guys brag about their sexual escapades. When Pepsi was labeled sexist, they pulled the app and tweeted what could be the most embarrassing corporate apology I’ve ever seen:

Our app tried 2 show the humorous lengths guys go 2 pick up women. We apologize if it’s in bad taste & appreciate your feedback. #pepsifail

First, they’re using text speak, which is simply an inappropriate language choice–a good apology demands a certain level of respect for the audience. Second, their apology has no empathy–there’s no indication they feel your pain–and lacks even a trace of them taking responsibility for their actions–they didn’t do anything wrong; it’s your fault for not having a sense of humor. Thirdly, they hashtagged their apology.

Nothing says “I’m sorry” better than self-referential metadata.

Empty Actions

Apologizing in person to people you’ve hurt might seem like a tremendous act of contrition…

Unless you’ve essentially swindled millions of dollars out of hard-working students for your business that’s about to declare bankruptcy. If that’s the case, your dogeza apology is going to be rejected because it doesn’t fit the circumstances: These customers don’t want bows, they want their money back.

Next Time

Those are three examples of truly terrible apologies. Have more? Please share them in the comments.

Next time, we’ll discuss the elements of a truly great apology. And see what we can learn from the experience I had apologizing to thousands of confused, angry, and irritated customers earlier this week…

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105 posts. One hundred. And five. That’s roughly 2.02 posts per week, which exceeds the minimum posting rate I’d set for myself (1 post/week) but falls short of the max I’d set (3 posts/week). That feels like success.

But what’s way more gratifying are the 716 Comments and 3,143 In-Bound Links those posts have generated.

For a blog started to help me muddle through my own thoughts about product management, that’s really gratifying. Astonishing, actually. And I’m thankful for everyone who has shared their thoughts with me here, on Twitter, and across the PM blogosphere.

A year into this, I think I’m just starting to understand this venue and what we can do with it. A handful of posts stand out to me, as examples of PMMPC at its best, most notably…

Win-Loss Analysis Of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 8 – Where we run through an example of Win/Loss analysis — and demonstrate how Dark Horse Comics lost me as a customer for Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 8, something that should have been an impossibility.

Know Who Understands The Strategic Power Of Product Vision Statements? Cobra Commander – Where a ruthless terrorist organization mobilizes product vision statements to successfully rule the world.

The Genius Of Van Halen’s Brown M&M Clause – Where brown M&Ms give product managers a lot to think about.

Beyonce’s Unique Selling Proposition – Where we look at examples of USPs — surprisingly, without being interrupted by Kanye West.

Why Xena Is The Greatest Product Manager Ever – ‘Nuff said.

Thanks for a great year! And here’s to another 365 days of weird hair movies and mistakes we can retroactively laugh at and learn from!

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Some will remember him for the rubber bands. The penchant for Hawaiian shirts. The boisterous rants.

But I’ll remember him best for demonstrating what it takes to make it in business…

Lesson #1: Always Leave Them Wanting More

Probably the most obvious, given the persona of Captain Lou. Whether he was in the ring himself or managing other wrestlers, Lou understood the point was not winning or losing–it was about making an impression and making people want to come back, again and again.

The next time you’re at a trade show or a cocktail party, how can you make yourself stand out from all the other people in the room? How can you make a memorable, positive impression–from what you say, to how you say it, right down to your business card’s appearance.

Hint: Depending on your industry, you probably don’t want to pin rubber bands to your face.

Lesson #2: Seek Non-Obvious Opportunities

Mixing Cyndi Lauper with pro-wrestling, on the surface, might not have the same visceral appeal as pairing chocolate with peanut butter. But Captain Lou spearheaded the Rock ‘n’ Wrestling movement that helped propel wrestling out of the cheap seats and into the mainstream.

On a similar tip, there’s no reason to think Mint.com could do better with Yodlee’s online personal finance software than Yodlee could. But Mint coupled that technology with a terrific user experience and a smart financing strategy. The end result: Mint acquired by Intuit for $170 million.

Some people wouldn’t think mixing user experience and personal finance is worthwhile. After all, it’s personal finance. It’s supposed to be a chore. But know the right ingredients, and you could produce something with great appeal.

Lesson #3: Play Your Part

Whether he was playing the evil manager trying to end the long-standing reign of beloved Bruno Sammartino, or rocking on the side of the angels, Captain Lou understood his role in the drama and played it to the hilt.

In business, there are roles and boundaries. As a product manager in a given business, you don’t tell your engineers how to code; you focus on what needs to happen and when. You encourage discussion and reasonable debate. You earn and develop trust, and your team does the same with you.

At the end of the day, everyone involved needs to know their role and do it well, and you play a key part in setting that tone–regardless of whether any of those involved report directly to you or not.

Lesson #4: Strike While The Iron’s Hot

Once Captain Lou moved into the mainstream with Rock ‘n’ Wrestling, he didn’t stop there–he capitalized on his new celebrity status with acting roles on TV’s Miami Vice and The Super Mario Brothers Super Show. He even had his own 900 number!

Lesson #5: Give Back

I’m not sure why he’s still wearing his Super Mario cap in this video clip. But Captain Lou demonstrated his willingness to give back to the community with this anti-drug public service announcement:

How do you contribute back to your industry and/or the product management community? Blogging? Commenting? Twittering? Whatever you can afford to do, do–everyone benefits, including you.

Bonus points if it’s not court-mandated.

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Today: We’ll use that story recap as a springboard into this week’s topic: The importance of confidence in product management.

And I don’t mean just the outside world’s confidence in product management; I mean our own confidence, in ourselves, as product managers. Because some of this week’s conversations on Twitter made me question whether or not we really have The Glow.

The Ironic Thing With Bruce Leroy

–besides the fact that he’s an African American who’s so into Japanese culture that he eats popcorn with chopsticks–is that he already is “The Master” he’s been searching for; he just doesn’t know it.

Only when the chips are down, at the end of the film, does Leroy finally realize he’s already achieved The Final Level and manifest The Glow.

I Like Bill Campbell As Much As The Next Guy

But some of the reaction in the product management community to the Intuit chairman’s comments about hiring product management early in the lifecycle seemed kind of strange to me.

Maybe I’m Just Spoiled

Having worked for companies where product management is respected, if not always well understood, maybe I just take for granted now that modern technology companies understand that you need…

somebody who can really understand the dynamics of what goes on in a marketplace, apply technology to that marketplace, see how the technology can work, and continue to advise brilliant scientists so they can adapt their products to make sure customers are happy.

Bill Campbell

If a company did not believe in the things Campbell is talking about, why would you want to work there?

When You Got The Glow…

As product managers, we spend a lot of time discussing the strategic importance of product management and taking to task trolls who should (and probably do) know better.

But I wonder if, somewhere inside, we’re not unlike Leroy–unaware that we already possess the Glow. Or, worse, doubting we have it. Or doubting it even exists. So we pounce on comments like Campbell’s that reinforce our beliefs.

We’ve established that product management requires courage and action. It also requires confidence.

And not the fake kind of confidence I’ve seen in people who don’t know what they’re in for.

I mean, the kind of confidence that reassures your team and your organization that what we’re investing our time and resources into is worthwhile, based on the data we’ve uncovered and processed, and can be successful.

In the immortal words of Willie Hutch:

Now all the masters know that you need the glow,
You need the glow, the glow to grow.
If you love to live, you live to love,
Hah, you got to move to the upper level.
Cos when you got the glow, there ain’t no stopping,
What you want to do.

Believe it.

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Where Are They Now?

I promised yesterday to give you updates on the stars of Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon; here you go:

• Taimak Guarriello (aka, Bruce Leroy) continues acting on TV and stage, and has developed a wellness program for young people. He is, of course, on Twitter.
• Vanity (aka, Laura Charles) left Hollywood to focus on her faith. Her recent memoir is titled “Blame It On Vanity”.
• Julius Carry III (aka, Sho’nuff) appeared in many genre television roles, such as the bounty hunter Lord Bowler in the The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., before his death on August 19, 2008.
• Christopher Murney (aka, Eddie Arkadian) appeared on the October 22, 2008, episode of Independent Lens
• Faith Prince (aka, Angela Viracco) is currently appearing on Broadway in Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
• DeBarge is no longer at large.

Tomorrow: We’ll use this story recap as a springboard into this week’s topic: The importance of confidence in product management.

< SPOILER WARNING >
Key plot points from this Taimak-Vanity-Julius Carry opus are pictured herein. You have been warned!
< / SPOILER WARNING >

Leroy is a martial arts master who loves Bruce Lee, but lacks confidence in his ability to find the mystical power known as The Glow.

Sho’nuff, aka the Shogun of Harlem, wants to fight Leroy and prove that he’s the baddest mo-fo, low-down, around this town. But Leroy refuses to fight because it’s a battle without meaning or honor.

Meanwhile, the maniacal music mogul Eddie Arkadian will stop at nothing to get….

… music video host Laura Charles to play his girlfriend’s latest (horrible) music video.

Unfortunately for Eddie, Laura is much more interested in playing DeBarge videos.

Eddie kidnaps Laura. Leroy saves the damsel in distress, twice. While Laura makes Leroy a special Bruce Lee music video to help him overcome his shyness, an outraged Eddie hires Sho’nuff to kill Leroy.

In a deadly showdown, Sho’nuff reveals that he has reached the legendary Final Level and mastered The Glow.

All seems lost, until a montage of memories of earlier scenes reveals to Leroy that he is, in fact, The Master--he just never allowed himself to believe it.

A panicked Eddie pulls a gun on Leroy. But the newly realized Master catches Eddie’s bullet between his teeth and disarms the flustered criminal.

The police take Eddie away. Laura and Leroy dance to music videos and presumably live happily ever after.

THE END

Tomorrow: We’ll use this story recap as a springboard into this week’s topic: The importance of confidence in product management. And we’ll also have an update on the stars on this seminal ’80s film.

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Bonus Content

Witness the final showdown between Leroy and Sho’nuff…

But, like any tool or Magic Mushroom, they can be used for good or evil.

Or, less dramatically, they can be misunderstood or misapplied, and that can lead to trouble…

Personas 101

Personas move you from the abstract to the more concrete. Instead of talking about a generic user or a generic customer with some generic demographic information, you’re now dealing with… Jill.

You get to know Jill. Her needs. Her fears. Her underlying motivations. And once you have that view into her head, the theory is you’ll be in a better frame of mind to answer two questions:

1. What profitable actions do I want Jill to take for me?
2. What do I need to do for Jill so she takes that profitable action for me?

How Do I Make A Persona?

If you have users and customers, visit them. Talk with them. Research them. Understand them. Then build personas based on what you’ve uncovered.

If you don’t have users or customers (eg, a startup situation), take an educated guess based on the information you do have on hand and use that as a starting point. If you’re lucky, like 37signals, maybe you are your own target audience–in which case, how well do you understand your own motivations and needs?

Here’s An Example Persona

Meet Jill. She’s 35, single, smart. Marketing Director responsible for marketing communications as a mid-size e-commerce site. And she has a problem.

Jill’s problem:

• She needs to brand campaigns that also drive monetizable traffic

Jill loves:

• ROI
• Straight talk
• Her reputation
• Experience with the product & product team
• Identifying trends and new traffic sources before anyone else

Jill avoids:

• Ambiguity
• A dearth of facts
• Poor analysis
• Emotional arguments
• Marketing fluff

Jill needs:

• Demonstrable ROI out of the gate
• Reliability
• Flexibility
• 24 hour customer support
• The best deal she can get

Jill’s motivations:

• Provide value to the company
• Seek new relationships and technology to drive the company forward
• Identify traffic sources before they’re recognized widely
• Be considered a innovator & trend-spotter inside and outside the company
• Eventually own her own business

The Pros Of Personas

• Personas create empathy…
• Empathy leads to understanding…
• Understanding leads to consensus…
• Consensus leads to eliminating nonessential features…
• And informing decisions based on what the persona needs and wants.
• [Feel free to insert your own Yoda joke here.]

The Pitfalls With Personas

There are at least three…

Personas, Shermsonas

Some teams don’t believe in personas. There’s been a lot of debate on that point. If you’re working with people who have been “duped” by personas in the past, you’re going to have a hard time convincing them of their utility.

Not Selecting The Right Personas

Each product should have at least three personas:

1. Primary persona: Represents the archetype user or customer for your product.
2. Secondary persona: With differing motivations, goals and other attributes from the primary persona.
3. Negative persona: Represents the archetype you are not here to serve. Your product is not for them.

Note: If your buyers and your users are distinct, they should have distinct personas as well.

But each product release should be targeted to meet the needs of a specific target. Some teams create personas but don’t choose the right one to focus on; instead, all personas are in play all the time–or they apply the wrong persona to the wrong feature set. Be specific. Who is your next product release for? Focus.

Twisted Thinking

Sometimes, personas are twisted around feature sets–that is, instead of thinking about the individual, and her goals, the thinking gets wrapped around product features. This leads to rote personas who don’t help you get to where you need to be because you’ve missed the trees for the forest.

Other times, personas never move beyond theory–they never get informed by actual customer visits or user observations–and that can leave valuable information on the table. When you validate your assumptions with real customer interactions, you may learn things you couldn’t imagine…

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Like The Magic Mushrooms Image At Top?

Buy the shirt at Threadless!

Next time, we’ll dive deeper into personas, including the perilous pitfalls of personas.

For more on personas, be sure to check out Death To Personas! Long Live Personas! which explains, refutes, and embraces some of the criticisms of personas (such as those discussed at On Product Management); Managing Your Power Users with Personas; and The Power of the Persona from Pragmatic Marketing.

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Beyonce’s willingness to bond, sister to sister, is part of her Unique Selling Proposition.

What’s A Unique Selling Proposition?

A Unique Selling Proposition focuses on the unique, genuine benefits that your product brings to your target customer.

Generally, USPs are a single sentence and are written plainly, but engagingly, so they’re easily understood.

Some Famous Examples…

• Burger King: “Have It Your Way” – You’ll get a handmade hamburger, with whatever you want on it, and you’ll get it fast
• FedEx: “When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight” – You can trust us to get the delivery done for you according to your schedule
• Domino’s Pizza: “Fresh hot pizza delivered to your door in thirty minutes or less, guaranteed” – Pretty on the nose, right there…

USP Has To Be Genuine

Not just a genuine benefit, but a benefit your product can truly deliver on.

Domino’s USP sounded good, but was eventually replaced by a time-independent promise, at least partially because the 30-minutes or less guarantee had some unintended consequences.

Beyonce’s USP

Beyonce has strong roots in R&B, but she’s able to move to hip-hop, to dance, to pop, and make it look effortless, sound great, and feel genuine.

In fact, at Beyonce concerts, the audience will often sing back to her, letting her know she’s Irreplaceable.

Selling? Beyonce is attractive, which is usually a selling point. And talented. And, as a superstar with a superstar team, knows how to package it all together in a compelling way.

Take her award-winning song “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)”: A catchy number about female empowerment, combined with a new dance people like to perform, and a music video that’s appealing to both men and women.

When her music is heard by her target audience, it says, “If you listen to me, if you buy me, if you dance with me, I’ll make you feel a certain way”–and then delivers on it.

Beyonce’s actions at the this year’s Video Music Awards cement her USP–her father/manager sums it up best:

“It wasn’t my decision to bring Taylor out. It was all Beyonce’s decision. [...] My job is to execute and come up with some ideas, but ultimately that was Beyonce’s decision. I can only say it was a proud night for me as a manager, but more importantly as a father. I’ve always said the thing that makes me most proud about Beyonce is not how many records she sold or how many plaques she has or how many awards; it’s that she’s a genuine good person.”

Mathew Knowles

All USP, All The Time

After you’ve distilled your product down to its most highly motivational benefits, and eliminated the benefits your competitors also offer, make sure your USP is integrated into all your communications, internally and externally, so your customers can feel it and your team can deliver on it.

And, if you like that USP, you really should put a ring on it.

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Today, Apple announced a fix that will let me do that kind of work in iTunes instead. But instead of talking about the importance of usability in a product, which should be pretty obvious, let’s talk about the importance of hate, which might be less obvious but an important competitive advantage.

World’s Finest #194 & #195 present a good case for how veering into the darkness can bring you back to the light.

In World’s Finest #194, an undercover Batman suffers a knock to the head that convinces him he’s actually a mobster. In WF #195, Superman maneuvers Batman into a situation with Robin and Jimmy Olsen that so fundamentally challenges Batman’s moral code that it restores his memories.

Product managers need to do the same thing.

Not masquerade as mobsters, suffer amnesia, or threaten teens into digging their own graves. But stop trying to get customers and users to like you and your product, and instead figure out what it is about your products that people hate.

Sometimes, you can just ask them. Other times, it’s worth sitting with customer service to get a sense of what the users of your product are talking about.

Taken on a case-by-case basis, it might seem like nothing’s there. Just isolated incidents. Crazy people. Cranks. But if you take a step back, patterns may start to form.

Angry emails and hate can mask real issues. New problems to solve that could make a mediocre product good, and a good product great.

(Now, to start rearranging those apps on my iPhone via iTunes.)

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