Do you know what are the most healing words in English? ‘I’m sorry‘ has the power to help to get rid of hurt and anger. When you speak business English, mastering the art of apologising can help you solve a few crisis with your customers and your team. Would you like a few tips?
Keep it short
Sometimes including an explanation will undo the apology.
Remember why you apologise
The objective of an apology should not be to deal with the underlying matter. What you really want is to prepare the ground for future communication. Leave it there. There will be plenty of time to deal with the real issues if you have a relationship in the end!
It’s about the other person
Don’t apologise and go ‘I feel so bad about what I said, because me, me, me, me’. It’s not about you, save your ‘me’ comments for another time.
Don’t improvise
Think about it carefully before you go in. If you are being attacked and you believe it’s plain wrong or off the mark, don’t apologise just to avoid confrontation. It’s ok to say ‘Thanks for your feedback. I see things differently, but I’ll continue to think about our conversation’
Try to make restitution
Don’t just apologise a hundred times to your customer because you sent the wrong articles. Act quickly on it. Offer to send the right articles asap. Offer a compensation. Otherwise, it’s not a real apology.
Never add ‘if’ or ‘but’
‘I’m sorry if you think our delivery was not on time’. That is like apologising because the other person is overly demanding or silly. Or ‘I’m sorry about the delivery, but we didn’t receive the confirmation order from you’. Just don’t do it. You apologise or you don’t.
An apology with ‘if‘ or ‘but‘ is never an apology at all.
The ‘I’m sorry you…’ apology
No way. ‘I’m sorry you feel our packaging is not what we agreed in our last meeting’. If it isn’t what was agreed you need to own it. ‘I’m sorry we got our packaging wrong’. And if you got it right and there is a missunderstanding, don’t apologise, just help clarify the matter.
Not every relationship will be restored
The best apology in the history of human kind might not be able to restore every relationship. Sometimes it may take many months or even to be absurdly inadequate to even say ‘sorry’.
ACTIVITY
- Discuss the last three times you had to apologise to someone at work.
- Write a comment at the end of this post with your apology for the following scenarios:
1- Your company has missed the deadline on an important replacement order. A whole team of assembly operators are not producing because our order will not arrive on time.
2- A delayed flight will force you to reschedule your meeting with this customer scheduled for next week.
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