Seat at the Table

Companies issuing statements about mistakes often pull punches and blame unseen forces.  The result are apologies that do little to protect, let alone build reputation.  Then there’s Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.  He (and his PR team) shows how to address a major mistake in a way that can actually strengthen reputation. 

The brief background:  Amazon got into a bit of reputation trouble last week when they deleted books from people’s Kindle e-reader without notifying them (including, oddly enough, 1984).  This was the result of the books being bought from an Amazon seller that did not have the right to sell it.  However, consumer sentiment was that this was a personal violation by Amazon and one that highlighted that you don’t really own them the way you own physical books (people asked if Amazon would have raided houses to take back books illegally sold?).

But then Mr. Bezos comes out with an apology so straightforward, it would be hard to doubt both the sincerity of the apology or of the commitment to doing better for customers:

This is an apology 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,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

The apology was issued on the Kindle forum and customer feedback on the forum was overwhelmingly positive.  You can see it here.

This is a great example of what makes a great customer service reputation – a combination of the right communication and business action..  It’s not that the service is perfect as that is rare, it’s that the company is honest about their mistakes and aggressive about fixing them.