I was driving home from hot yoga on Sunday morning and I passed a billboard from a regional bank that is not doing so well these days. In my humble opinion they made some poor choices. Their stock is now… a bit low. And their employees seem to have lost that swing in their step. I imagine shareholder meetings aren’t very friendly.

Anyway this billboard proclaims in typical bank speak: Time to Talk to our Business Experts.

Hmmm.

Well it crossed my mind that a better, more honest set of words might simply be:

We’re sorry.

Now I know there are most likely all sorts of lawyers that would say never, ever admit guilt. But sometimes, and I know this from personal and professional experience the phrase “I’m sorry” — if it’s spoken from the heart — can be remarkably powerful. And it can move a relationship forward.

Years ago we went to a new business meeting and shared an idea (not our normal style to jump in with random ideas, but hey we were young and starry eyed). Anyway this meeting was with a very large company that had done some really stupid things to hang on to customers. You know like making it hard to cancel your service that you really no longer needed or loved. And they were stunned at our notion to simply say: We’re sorry.

Didn’t drink our kool-aid at all. Oh well. Have to say for the record that I have never been so certain in my life that the strategy would have worked. And would have helped them as a company. Trust me they really needed to say sorry and mean it. Guess that’s why we didn’t get the gig.

I got an email recently from a friend and it was just one line. My favorite emails are often just one liners.

All it said was this:

I am so sorry.

I kept it. And I read it whenever I need it. It was just a rather simple little goof up he was apologizing for – but he really meant it. And that touched me on a level that I can’t explain. I kept it not because I wanted to hear him say it over and over again, but I kept it and I re-read it because I want to remember the power of that one simple phrase.

When has a simple apology completely changed your mind about a situation or a company? Come on its Tuesday. Share with me. I’m not writing these blogs just to hear myself talk.

BTW – this post pretty much sums up how I feel about the Domino’s thingy. It was just an ad campaign.

You have to mean it for it to be powerful.

Photo via Clif Wright Photography via Flickr altered by Justin Gammon.

There’s been a lot of chatter about the Edelman Trust Barometer. And I’m a little late to the party. I love David Armano’s post from about a month ago. Smart guy. Here’s one of the most thought provoking points he makes:

Who are our friends that we have chosen not to hide in Facebook—who are the people whose phone calls we take and whose e-mails we read right away? It’s an important question. If there is a company that has totally nailed the algorithm in this, I’d invest in it because I think there is a future in understanding in depth how people separate signal from noise and who truly influences their behavior from consideration to point of action.

Hhhmmmm.

Like Armamo, I approach things rather intuitively so this is a bit of a zag.

Here are two really compelling lines I took away from Richard Edelman’s executive summary:

Trust has emerged as a new line of business - one to be developed and delivered.

Now is the time for business to prove its commitment to profit — and purpose.

Amen Brother!

We work with companies to help them find the passion conversation, not the product conversation in an effort to ignite a movement, create company growth and spark innovation.

I personally believe the shared passion between a company’s employees and customers are where a genuine sense of purpose can be found.

According to recent Gallup Poll data, 73% of employed Americans are not psychologically connected to their work. They show up but are not passionate.

That stat is mind numbing to me.

I can’t imagine a life where I’m not passionate about what I do. Can’t imagine life without purpose. So helping your employees find purpose and passion — and drawing them closer and more connected to your customers is a big part of your organization’s story.

And another thing — shared passion and purpose absolutely create feelings of trust, openness and transparency. I know that to be truth.

So it’s about freakin’ time for businesses to get serious, get this stuff under their fingernails and see it as part of the work they do in the world.

And that’s what I have to say about that.

Now your turn…GO.

A tribute to old Jeeps.

A few weeks ago, our friend Kim Banks down at Full Circle PR asked me if I could help her figure out how to install a Sirius / XM radio in her husband’s Jeep. After signing up for the service and buying a unit on sale, she planned to borrow her husband’s car and return it to him with the satellite service to surprise him. After hearing rumors that I had tinkered with Jeeps she wanted to know if I could help her surprise her husband with the gift.

After some research I determined that in order for her to get it back to her husband on time she would probably need to take it to a professional. A few weeks passed and I didn’t hear anything more about it.

One morning when Kim was in the Dead Dog Diner I asked her how things had turned out with the surprise and where she had taken the car. I was shocked - she said that she had actually given up on it, but through a turn of events, was now a fully devoted fan of Sirius / XM. Here’s what happened.

When Kim found out what it would take to get the unit installed and how much it would cost, she realized that it would take too long and she wouldn’t be able to surprise her husband. She was also frustrated that the cost of installation was a lot more than she had bargained for. So she decided to scrap the whole thing.

She called Sirius / XM and told them she wanted to cancel the service. When they asked her why, she told them the story. She thought it would be a great gift for her husband, who loves sports and news radio, but the frustration of actually getting it up and running was too much, even if she admittedly should have done more research. She was going to find another gift for her husband.

And Sirius / XM stepped up to the plate and seized the opportunity to stand by their service and remove the barriers that had turned a potential customer away.

They told her:

“You know what - we think you’ll really, really like Sirius, and we’re sorry for the confusion about the installation. If you’re still willing to give it a shot, we’ll send you a free-installation voucher so you can take it to an authorized dealer to get taken care of. Also, we don’t want you to be paying for something you’re not using - so we just won’t charge you for the first month of your service.”

Kim said,

“They treated me like a customer before I was a customer, and now we’re huge fans. They were confident that we’d like the service, and they were right - and when they found out we were having trouble, they just made everything so easy.”

Kim’s husband swears by satellite radio now - it really was the perfect gift for him. So perfect, in fact, that he’s giving all of this CDs to Kim because he doesn’t use them much any more. And Sirius won them by treating them as the valuable customers they had the potential to be, even though they hadn’t even used their satellite radio yet.

*Sirius / XM is a pretty interesting company. Their history has been rocky to say the least, including a near-brush with bankruptcy, a controversial merger and a poorly-received iPhone app launch. And when you have a rough history, it’s not surprising that you’ll bend over backwards to gain more subscribers. Or maybe they’re starting to figure things out.

Invest in vocabulary?

Yes.

Kyle Bylin, the associate editor at hypebot, wrote a very interesting article on “True Fans and Outsiders” as they relate to bands and the music industry. Kyle points out that language is a vital component of community - committed cores of fans

…use language to help create their culture, but if you take away or change their sacred words, over time the tribe’s sense of identity slowly starts to erode.

We experience this every day, much of the time without even noticing it. We have a certain vernacular with our loved ones, our friend groups and our co-workers. But lots of companies see the importance in it as well - Starbucks refers to employees as “partners” because they want their workers to take ownership in the success of the company. Chick-fil-A employees make constant use of the phrase “my pleasure” because they want customer service to be at the top of their minds.

So it got me thinking - if some of this happens naturally among employees and customers - what would happen if a company not only listened to the vocabulary being use by those groups, but invested in it? Intentionally gave the people who interact with them a sense of belonging, simply in the language they use?

Are there any stories you know of companies making this type of vocabulary-investment?

This blog post was inspired by a with Kira Wampler, Word of Mouth/Social Marketing Leader at Intuit Inc.

What do I care? Why should I care? What do your customers care about?

For the company that doesn’t, “care” is a four-letter word. For the company that does, “care” is a big word. Huge even. Because when you care, emotion enters into the equation. For some companies, emotion is a scary thing. Because emotion doesn’t show up as a line-item on a P&L report. Emotion can make things very sticky. And emotion is unpredictable.

But caring can be your greatest asset. Because when you allow your employees to care about their jobs, care about what happens to their fellow employees and care about their customers, there’s a shift in culture. I guarantee that when you walk in the doors of a company or have your first interaction with them online, you can tell the difference between a company that cares and a company that doesn’t care.

Yes, we all care about the bottom line. Because, like the Tequila Shots book says, we can’t make a difference if we cease to exist. But that’s a different kind of caring. I’m talking about the caring that comes when the times get tough. The kind of caring that comes with making sure you’re doing everything within your power to solve a person’s problem - even if they are a chronic complainer. And the caring that comes from believing that your customer’s success is your success.

So if you don’t care, then it’s going to be obvious to your employees and customers. And since love (or the lack of it) is a circular transaction, guess what? I guarantee that they aren’t going to care about you either. And good luck with that.