Regret Reason Remedy: when sorry falls short

Regret Reason Remedy sits at the heart of our crisis management training courses.

And boy, would the staff we met in Edinburgh this week have benefitted from it.

My wife and I, along with friends, were attending the Festival Fringe in the city.

Delighted with our planning abilities, we’d left two hours for lunch amid five productions.

The sun even came out as we found a seat looking up at the castle from the Lawnmarket.

Having placed our order for drinks and food, we sat back and relaxed.

After 20 minutes we enquired about our drinks.

The waitress was sorry, but a lot of orders were placed at the same time.

After 40 minutes we pleaded to be watered and fed.

Again she was very sorry and they were doing their “very best”.

After an hour, our drinks arrived but where was the food?

I asked if she could check to see when it was coming as we were running out of time.

After 70 minutes, another waitress arrived.

She said she was very sorry, there had been a mix up with the kitchen and the order had been lost.

Now, what was it we wanted and she would “ASAP the order”.

The 3 R’s of communication

We always share with clients that the best way to recover a situation that’s gone wrong in business is to say sorry up front.

Both waitresses had certainly done that.

But that’s just a third of the story.

We also recommend that clients tell their audience the reason for things going wrong.

And end by saying what they’ll do to remedy the situation.

Here’s how Thomas Cook and United Airlines could have done just that.

Regret Reason Remedy

Offering to “ASAP the order” was a platitude rather than a solution.

It falls along the same lines as “doing our very best”.

So we left without eating any food and refusing to pay for the drinks.

Which we were earlier offered 10% off for our inconvenience.

The solution to this mess is what we call Regret Reason Remedy.

“I’m very sorry about the delay” (Regret)

“I’m unsure what’s happened” (Reason)

“So I’ll check with the kitchen to make sure your order is underway” (Remedy)

And if the waitress had done that, the restaurant would have been almost £100 better off.

The right attitude

Whether on our media training and communication skills courses at our Glasgow studios, our travels around the world, or virtually, the message is always the same.

When a company is announcing redundancies or closing down shops or offices, The Three Rs of communication come to the rescue.

Regret Reason Remedy.

With it, any business and any individual can recover an incident that’s gone wrong.

Communicating the three Rs with an attitude that puts it right.

Bill McFarlan is the Executive Chairman of Pink Elephant Communications in Glasgow.

You can view his full profile here.

Photos in Regret Reason Remedy blog by Pink Elephant Communications / mayhem via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA, Michael Browning on Unsplash, By Festival Fringe Society (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons