Why Amazon’s Public Apology is Important
Amazon has been much in the news lately with a variety of situations ranging from unilaterally shutting down associate accounts in North Carolina and Rhode Island where state legislatures were considering taxing online sales to buying the stellar shoe company Zappos and forging a new channel of e-readers with its Kindle and Kindle 2 products. Wherever you stand on Amazon’s development as a monolithic distribution channel, we have to give kudos where they’re due.
In this case, the abject mea culpa by CEO Jeff Bezos on the Amazon website the other day is a model apology to customers for a colossal mistake (again a unilateral decision -this time much more far reaching than the one mentioned above).
Last week many Kindle owners woke up to find their copies of 1984 by George Orwell missing from their libraries. It turns out that Amazon did not really have the rights to sell a $.99 public domain version of this book as it is still under copyright. However, instead of providing an accurate explanation, Amazon deleted this title (and Animal Farm) from Kindle users’ bookshelves. These titles were deleted from users’ Kindles when they turned them on and synched with the Kindle mother ship. Instead of being honest about what happened - that Amazon had purchased illegal copies of these titles - they sent out an erroneous statement to affected customers:
“The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.”
Instead of admitting its mistake, Amazon blamed the publisher. The media had a field day, of course, with the irony of this happening with 1984 and its “big brother” theme. It turned into such a hullabaloo that Amazon executives determined that nothing less than a “fall on the sword” apology would end the conversation. Then Amazon did a very smart thing.
Earlier this week, CEO Jeff Bezos apologized on the Amazon site:
“for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our ’solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission. With deep apology to our customers.”
Why is this important?
- In a matter of hours and days, this situation spiraled out of control because Amazon abused the trust it had established with its Kindle customers (at a guess, the most evangelistic Amazon customer segment). By reaching into their “private” libraries without warning, the Kindle owners felt violated and angry.
- As a high-profile company, Amazon’s mistake was highly visible to Kindle customers and other Amazon customers questioned what it meant for each of them if was is how Amazon evangelists were treated.
- It is a lesson to all companies not to insult the intelligence or the goodwill of their customers and to recognize when they’ve crossed the line and need to make a heartfelt and very public apology.
- In this age of instant communication, people need communication from the companies and people they have relationships with. Don’t assume that you can evade responsibility for a situation by keeping it under the radar. It is human nature that in the absence of accurate information, people make things up. When that happens, things frequently spiral out of control.
- When you screw up. Apologize. Throw yourself at the mercy of your customers and beg forgiveness.
- Customers want you to understand that you screwed up, you’re taking responsibility for it, that they have every right to be upset, and you will never, never do it again.
- You are giving them an opportunity to be magnanimous and forgive you. That puts the balance of power in the customer relationship back in the hands of the customer where it belongs.
- It sends a powerful message to your own team that you are in the customer service business no matter what business you are in.
What other lessons do you think there are to be gleaned in this situation?
Posted in: Marketing |
