First off Happy Holidays everyone!

I know I haven’t updated lately but it has been a little busy with work, coaching,

the holidays, and wedding stuff.

Anyways sometimes it’s not the fact that you screw up but it is the art of the

apology and how you react to it that people will judge you down the line and talk

about you.

Don’t believe me??

Ask Andy Pettite, Roger Clemens, and Barry Bonds.  All three were pretty much

assumed that they did steriods in baseball.  Pettite apologized immediately and

has been playing for the Yankees every season since then and people have

forgotten about it.  Bonds and Clemens, well google search them, and I highly

doubt either has a chance to get into what was once thought to be first ballot

hall of fame nominations for them.

Last night I used a Montgomery Inn gift card (thanks Aunt Sharon!) to go get

dinner to go.  I live and work downtown and Montgomery Inn is way up in North

Columbus so it was about 20-25 minute drive after work.  I had ordered online and

received a confirmation but when I got there my order was sitting on the printer

at the hostess station.  Untouched and unlooked at for the last 45 minutes since

I had ordered, left work, and driven up there.

I also had to get back downtown in 45 minutes to coach a basketball game.

So stop right there…

I was not upset at all at this point.

I was very kind and explained the situation and just asked if they could put a rush

on it.  That being said…they did screw up and were probably lucky it was just one

order they had received on a slow Tuesday night over the holidays.

Imagine if they had gotten 20 online orders during that time period and they had

all gone untouched.

Montgomery Inn management wouldn’t have any of my it’s no problem attitude

though.  They said it was completely unacceptable and apologized about 25 times.

The GM came out and asked what I would like on the house and insisted on

throwing in free salads, desserts, and when my bill was about $20 over the gift

card that I was going to wind up paying he rang it up even at the gift card price

so I didn’t have to pay a penny.

They said it would never happen again and got the food ready in ten minutes

and I was on my way.

I never raised a peep that I was upset or annoyed but it was their art of the

apology that has me writing about them at 8am in the middle of a holiday week.

They went over and above what they needed to do, admitted their mistakes,

quickly fixed them and wound up having me walk out of their restaurant with a

positive review of them that I will share with people instead of a bad one.

It will be in my conversations how outstanding they are at service, not how error

prone they can be.

If they had simply said oh well you should have called in probably instead of

ordered online and it’s going to be an extra 30 minutes so sit tight idiot.

(Which could happen by the way some people treat other people.)

Then I probably wouldn’t have been so nice and patient.

In all aspects of business and life it’s how you apologize and admit your mistakes

after they take place that will really show what type of person or company they

are.

It’s safe to still EAT at Montgomery Inn…GO RIBS!

Happy and Safe New Year’s Eve everyone see you in 2011!!

Thanks for reading and always email me at mike@marketingfunwithmike.com for

ideas or post on here plus follow at http://twitter.com/marketingmiker.