When it comes to admitting your faults or mistakes to your customers, it is critical that you be honest and open and explain exactly what happened and why to your customers. In the current global economy news can spread in a matter of seconds through many forms of social media (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Email, SMS, rating sites – just to name a few) and traditional mediums. If you lie to your customers or omit information, when they find out it could easily spread like wild fire. Now more than ever businesses have no choice but to be honest with their customers, or face extinction.

Here at Crucial we’ve been following this belief since our inception. We believe that every customer has a right to know the truth, and as a result we have a large amount of brand trust and our customers trust us and refer us a lot more business. We wouldn’t be where we are as a company today if it weren’t for this belief. Not only have learnt by following this belief, but we have also learnt the hard way in one or two instances where we could have been more open with our communication. In those situations we received backlash which could have easily been resolved by just stating a few facts that were omitted at the beginning.

So, What Should You Be Doing?
Take Responsibility For Your Actions:
Don’t pass the blame on to others even if it was their fault, it doesn’t look good if you pass the blame on to someone else. For example if a particular vendor was at fault and caused an issue for your customers, it’s not actually the vendors fault but ultimately your responsibility for choosing that vendor.

Provide Clear And Concise Information, Quickly:
Make sure your communication is clear, and easy to understand for your customers. The sooner you communicate with them the better, otherwise during the time the customers could be thinking all sorts of things about why something happened.

Provide All The Facts:
Make sure you provide all the facts to the customers, and state it as it is. Trying to make something sound better than it was won’t serve to help your situation.

Communicate The Cause And Resolution:
While providing the facts in a clear in concise format is important, it’s also equally important to communication the ultimate root cause for the mistake/issue made and exactly how the issue will/was resolved. On top of this, you should explain what steps you have taken to ensure the same type of issue does not occur again in future.

Air Your Dirty Laundry:
Don’t be afraid to air your dirty laundry, it’s going to get out at some point – and it’s better from you than someone else. If found out later and you didn’t tell your customers in the first, you will lose reputation and brand trust.

Ensure All Your Team Know The Facts:
Lastly ensure your relevant team members know what you have communicated with your customers, and they know all the information above and can explain it to any customers who contacts them.
But Why Should You Be Doing This?
Doing What’s Right:
We believe that being honest and open with the customer is the right thing to do. If you were on the receiving end, would you want to get open and honest communication as a customer?

Trust:
Trust takes a long time to build, but can be lost in the blink of an eye. Many shoppers these days will first do research on a company by using Google, asking their friends, etc before they make a purchase. Your reputation is critical to ensuring the future success of your business in a global economy where you are no longer just competing locally, but you are now competing with the globe. Once you have lost trust you will have to build it up again over time.

Customers Will Be More Receptive:
Most customers understand that stuff can go wrong, and if you keep them in loop you will ease their fears/concerns.

Increased Sales & Referrals:
Increasing your brand trust will result in increased sales and referrals. Your customers will refer other customers to you because they trust you. This result in you needing to spend less on advertising, and decreasing your cost of acquisition of each customer.

Do you have any examples in your own businesses, or other businesses where the situation could have benefited from using an open and honest approach with customers? What lessons did you learn?