How Not to Handle a Stuff Up
The Spark Sport team sent an email to all subscribers on 22 September 2019 with reference to some of the transmission issues that had occurred.
Their email said “You may have experienced some disruption while watching last night’s RWC 2019™ match between New Zealand and South Africa. This happened because of fluctuations in the quality of the video feed from our overseas partners and as a result, we decided to switch live play over to TVNZ DUKE”
There are two things that stand out as a bad example of dealing with service or product issues – firstly this was a broad-brush email, sent to everyone, not just those that had issues therefore making it clear that ‘issues’ were widespread and more common than not.
The second, and most significant, was the blame attribution. The clearly stated ‘not our fault’ line grates - “this happened because of fluctuations in the quality of the video feed from our overseas partners”. Like they’re saying that they’ve done all they can but it wasn’t their fault, like the toddler who accidentally breaks the window playing with a ball. Except they’re not toddlers, they’re a behemoth in the NZ business space and have more resources than most of us in startups or small businesses could dream of. They had the means, the people, the technology to test and test and test again to mitigate these risks. But even if they didn’t, they should own it! This ‘It wasn’t my fault’ crap is just not good enough Spark!
In any business suppliers let us down, things fail, shxt happens, but our customers don’t want to know ‘it’s not our fault’.
They want to know you can be trusted to deliver the agreed value exchange (the service/product for the price paid) even on the bad days or when there’s a stuff up, because we all know things can go haywire or the unexpected happens – in fact, research by Gartner (formerly the Sales Executive Council) have proven that loyalty increases when stuff-ups are handled well. We know mistakes happen so when they do and they’re handled well, we actually up our loyalty to that provider. It seems they earn more trust as we know that on the bad days, they have our backs.
The action Spark took was prompt and alternative they provided was pretty good, they provided alternative access, albeit assuming people also had free-to-air tv. They also annoyed a lot of people with long wait times on their helplines etc too so forewarning may have made sense too.
From a strategy and risk perspective, it would seem they had anticipated this and developed an action plan. Perhaps they could have also increased the quality of the mitigation steps, considered alternatives, and better yet, worked hard to test robustly ahead of schedule and let people know that ‘if this happens, do this…’. Not always needed but when launching a new offering, expecting the unexpected, developing a strong contingency plan for the some left field ‘what if’ moments can be really helpful and give peace of mind.
The lessons here are:
1. When launching something new, strategy matters and risk is part of strategy! Understand what the good, the bad and the ugly can be, mitigate the last two, test the solutions and make sure everyone knows what to say and do.
2. Communicate and give people the ‘what if’ insights ahead of time.
3. Own it. If shxt hits the fan, be a grown up and own it. It’s actually the best way to increase loyalty.
“Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts”
