A late dinner, a pile of excuses, and a reminder that what you do with feedback, good and bad, is pretty much the whole job.
I want to talk about feedback tonight. What you actually do with it when it lands, whether it’s good, bad, or somewhere in between. And I’ve got a story.
A couple weeks ago we ordered dinner from a local place. A small business, one I genuinely love supporting, so I’m not going to name it or throw anybody under the bus. The order started off great. They messaged right away to say it would be a little delayed because they were slammed. Loved that. Clear communication, no complaints from me.
Then we got a text that it was on the way. This place is maybe ten minutes from my house. Twenty minutes later, no food. So we called. Any minute now, they said, a couple of stops ahead of us. Fine. More time passed. I called back. The person said they would check on the driver and call me right back. They didn’t. I called again, got put on hold for a couple of minutes. By now it had been over two hours since we ordered, and the food, when it finally showed up ice cold, was the kind of thing that is no good cold.
And here’s the part that stuck with me. Every single apology came with a “but.” I’m sorry, but we’re understaffed. I’m sorry, but I’m the only one on the phones. I’m sorry, but we got slammed. Sorry but, sorry but, sorry but.
They did refund me, and I genuinely appreciated that. But the “but” is what I couldn’t stop thinking about.
“I’m sorry, but” is not an apology
We’ve talked about this before. The second you put a word after “I’m sorry,” you cancel the sorry. “I’m sorry, but we were busy” doesn’t land as an apology. It lands as a defense. What the person on the other end actually hears is: here is why this is understandable, and here is why you shouldn’t be so upset.
I didn’t need the reasons. I didn’t need the staffing report. I wanted the exact thing my own clients want when we let them down. To be heard. To have someone say, you’re right, we messed up, I’m sorry, we’re refunding you, and we’re going to do our very best to make sure it doesn’t happen again. That’s it. Full stop. No “but.”
Sitting in the customer’s seat
That night did something useful for me. It put me right back in my client’s chair.
Because we have been on the other side of this. We have had understaffed days. We have dropped balls. So I am sympathetic, truly. But being the customer for once reminded me that the reasons do not matter to the person sitting there waiting on cold food. At the end of the day it falls on the owner. It falls on me. And the only thing that actually helps is ownership. I am so sorry, that should not have happened, here is what we are going to do to make it right, right now.
What we do when we’re the ones who dropped it
We had a job recently that we did not do great on. I won’t call it a full fail, because it wasn’t. Some of it was things the client never told us she wanted. Some of it was genuinely on us. A bunch of little balls got dropped.
So I had two roads. I could defend us tooth and nail. You’re being unreasonable, this is ridiculous, we did everything right. Or I could step back and own our part. You’re absolutely right. Balls were dropped, that should not have happened, here are the steps we’re taking so it doesn’t happen again, and here’s what we’re going to do to make it right for you.
One of those roads keeps a client and makes your company better. The other one just protects your ego.
And whatever you decide, do something with the feedback on the inside too. Use it as a coaching moment for your team, not a reason to berate them. The complaint is information. Where was the communication breakdown? The expectation breakdown? The training breakdown? That is what extreme ownership looks like, and it’s how you actually fix the thing instead of just white-knuckling past it.
(And yes, people can get surprisingly intense about house cleaning. It is not life or death, and if we miss something minor we will happily come back and make it right. But that does not excuse the balls we dropped either. Both things are true at the same time.)
The feedback nobody warns you about
Here’s the flip side, and honestly it might be the harder one. What do you do when the feedback is good?
Because I am terrible at this. Somebody gives me a compliment and I physically shake it off. I’ve literally flinched and said “oh, thank you” and changed the subject as fast as I could. And I don’t think I’m alone. Most of us are far better at absorbing the losses than the wins.
We have more than a thousand five-star reviews across all our platforms. More than a thousand. And we’ll get one single one-star, and I start doom spiraling like it’s the beginning of the end. It isn’t. It’s one data point and a lesson. But my brain will hand that one star ten times the weight of the thousand.
So take the wins. Not as an egomaniac, not conceited, just with a little humility. You are allowed to hear something good about yourself and let it actually land. You need those wins, because they stick around a whole lot less time than the losses do.
So here’s the real question
How you handle feedback, good and bad, is not some side skill. It kind of is the job.
So what do you do with it? When a client tells you that you got it wrong, do you own it clean, or do you reach for the “but”? And when someone tells you that you got it right, can you actually take it in?
I would love to hear it. Tell me in the comments.
Talk tomorrow.
Jen