

Ask HN: Best Mea Culpa When You Really Screw Up?  - callmeed

We had an incident (long story) which resulted in the loss of some customer data (files/data gone but no sensitive data compromised).<p>I'm wondering what is the best way to explain and make things right with our affected clients? Direct email, blog post, and/or something else? Who has done this right/wrong in the past?<p>TIA
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icey
How many clients were impacted? If it was under 100, call each of them and
explain. If it was over 100 but under 1000, send an email and include your
direct telephone number or cell phone number. Be prepared to eat some crow on
the phone.

Over 1000... hire a PR expert because you're gonna have some real problems
either way. (edit: Actually, I don't know if that's the right response here.
It's outside of my experiences so maybe someone could weigh in on what to do
on a problem of that scale)

The important thing is to identify the impacted clients, assess the severity
of the problem, and tell them how you're going to prevent this from happening
again (I assume you've figured out how to stop this from happening again).

Good luck.

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cmos
No matter how many were affected, call your best 100 customers and talk to
them about it. Say that you messed up, and are changing things to ensure this
does not happen again, and then keep blabbing on until the phone call turns
into a discussion of features and new stuff that your doing.

Now you have a sales call. Every point of contact with a customer, even
telling them you screwed them, is an opportunity for a sale, or at the very
least to come out of the situation more understanding of each other.

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bsiemon
If you are accredited with the BBB make sure to respond if they contact you.
Failure to respond to an inquiry will result in loss of accreditation.

A previous employer of mine learned this the hard way.

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gotproject
Yeah definitely be open about it, don't hide anything, and prove that it will
never happen again

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_pius
Full disclosure, full restitution, genuine contrition.

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stretchwithme
explain the measures you are taking to ensure that it never happens again

