Saying sorry is tricky for businesses. Some people will tell you not to apologise too much, because it puts you in a weaker position, open to more criticism. Others will do that yucky, over-the-top fake-apologising that they think social media wants them to do. Smileys everywhere. You can be too chummy, too cold, not professional enough and so on. Tricky stuff indeed.
I got an email from Dreamhost today. And I think it’s a great example of getting the tone right. It admits failure without looking incapable, it is frank without being cold, it shows humanity, empathy and finishes with a positive, pro-active tone.
This is of course subjective. You could also argue that no tone of voice can resolve dented confidence – especially regarding security issues – but I still think there are lessons here in the broadest sense. Here’s the first part of the email:
Holy crap guys and girls.
Holy crap.
“NightmareHost” is a term that’s been thrown around by upset customers since the very beginning. Pick a name like DreamHost and you’re pretty much asking for it.
Sticks and stones, right? Not this time. This is the first month where we feel like we’ve actually earned the title. And we’re just as… nonplussed about it as you are.
January was a perfect storm of software deployment issues, critical networking hardware failures, and a security situation that prompted a large-scale password reset.
If you’d like to relive the magic of the last 30 days, January’s troubles were documented in great detail as-they-happened over on our system status blog:
This should not come as much of a surprise – even if you didn’t notice any problems with your site in January, the email we sent out to all our customers was hard to miss.
We let you down – of that we are acutely aware. All I can say is we’re sorry beyond words and we’re working on fixing things – a lot of things. We’re hopeful that once we come out on the other side we’ll again be that gleaming paragon of hosting excellence that you were supposed to be thinking of us as all along.
There’s really nothing funny about January. Sorry.
The good news is we’ve got lots to announce this month, so let’s get this show on the road.
-Brett
