UnSelling: The New Customer Experience

Chapter 45How Not to Apologize

This should really be Humanity 101. We teach kids in kindergarten how to do it for goodness' sake. But over and over again I am amazed by just how horrible we are at making an apology. We all make mistakes, and the world of social media can certainly amplify them, but, as we spoke about in The Book of Business Awesome/UnAwesome, when it hits the fan, it isn't time to hide behind the fan. It's time to be awesome—or at the very least, genuinely sorry.

Step 1: Social Media Fark Up

“All tweets are my own.”

This is the most dangerous thing you could ever say in social media. I see it in social bios all the time. Heck, a lot of companies make it a policy that if you're going to be on social media, you must use a disclaimer so that everybody knows whatever you say is not official word from “the” corporation. Just to make sure that you taking a pic of your chicken noodle soup isn't endorsed by Acme Corp.

“All tweets are my own and not a reflection of my employer.”

Companies have handled this all wrong. Your employees are a reflection of your company. They are the most important reflections of it. End of story.

Those employee disclaimers hurt more than they help actually because they give people the false sense of freedom with social media speech. If you disclose where you work, you're wearing that name badge 24/7 online. Even if you don't disclose, you're just a LinkedIn search away from being outed.

If you're going to make employees put a disclaimer ...