Reasons vs Excuses
Things
go wrong – that happens when we deal with other humans or with systems or
processes designed by humans. Anyone
expecting to go through life with no problems will be disappointed.
My own view is that what counts is how
we react to the problem and how quickly we put things right. After all, if an unhappy customer gives free
feedback about what we can put right, we should welcome it.
I’ve seen two reactions to a complaint:
to give an excuse or to give a reason for why things went wrong.
O’Dell
Consulting provide this excellent explanation of the difference between an
excuse and a reason:
A “reason” is an explanation
for why something is the way it is, with everyone involved taking
accountability for their part in a situation. An excuse is an explanation for
why something is the way it is, that always involves the blame being put on
someone or something that isn’t involved in the conversation, and not able to
share their side of the story. What’s the difference? The accountability.
… some examples. Common excuses
for why restaurants, or other businesses, fail include:
- Our employees were stealing from us
- Our purveyors were cheating us
- Our concept was too progressive for the market
- The market didn’t appreciate good food
- Our landlord was unreasonable
- We didn’t have a reliable system for evaluating good help, and we didn’t supervise our employees as effectively as we could have, so we lost a lot of money from theft;
- We didn’t know anything about negotiating purchasing, and ended up paying prices we couldn’t afford to pay;
- We didn’t research our market well enough to find out what the market wanted, so we ended up giving them what OUR idea of good food was, not theirs;
- We failed to communicate what made us special compared to the competition, and the market didn’t respond – or – We didn’t realise that our market doesn’t have the same ability to notice quality that we have, and we were really banking on them realizing our food was better;
- We didn’t negotiate a good lease.
You probably notice a trend
here. For every excuse that an owner can give for a business failing, there is
a real reason that points back to something THEY did or didn’t do.
Basically, a reason takes accountability for the
results (even if it means the speaker looks “bad”).
An excuse is usually
defensive and tries to exculpate the speaker from any accountability for the
incident in question.
When we give an excuse
for something, we attempt to give the customer a reason to relieve us of accountability
for what happened. If the listener then
excuses us, we’ve dodged any penalty or consequences (e.g. loss of business,
etc) that might have been due.
A reason is the logical path we took that resulted in the complaint
occurring, along with an explanation of the causal relationship of our actions
relevant to it. It doesn’t assume we’ll
be excused, and should be complete.
Excuses are usually more common than reasons, especially as
they make us look better. The problem
is, they’re easy to see through and only irritate the customer more.
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Crisis Management, Customer Care, Leadership, Productivity, Selling, Strategy, Teamwork
posted by William Martin @ 15:59
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