Mistake = Opportunity
I wanted to start blogging with a piece of advice I consider really important for businesses, as it’s the fact of turning a mistake the company has made into an opportunity to fix it, giving the customer something valuable and unexpected for him.
To understand this better, I’m going to present an example of a real case that I listened to a while ago:
A father planned, in detail, a trip to DisneyWorld (Orlando) to celebrate the birthday of his little daughter.
This man had previously talked to the hotel they were going to stay in to set up a surprise to his child. When she got to the room, it was supposed to be full of balloons, and also a birthday cake should have been on top of the bed.
As they were walking along the hallway, the happy dad was saying to his daughter: “I think you have something special in the room”, while looking at her running to the door.
What a bitter surprise when they finally got in the room, because nothing of what he had set up with the staff of the hotel was there, not even a lousy balloon.
When the father found a moment, he went to talk with the manager, who inmediatly apologized and justified the mistake as a communication problem between his workers, committing to have the room ready for the next morning.
The father accepted, but he was still quite upset because the surprise had been completely ruined.
The next morning, coming back from having breakfast, they went in the room and couldn’t believe what they saw: a ceiling full of balloons, a big table with every single kind of sweet, a huge birthday cake and lots of little Disney toys. In addition, they were given the possibility of staying one more night with no extra cost.
After this, the opinion of the father changed drastically and the annoyance turned into satisfaction when seeing his kid’s joy.
With this real story, I want to show you the radical change in the client, who went from being a detractor of the company to being a promoter of it, something really difficult and valuable for any company.
This is why when a business makes a mistake, it must try and be capable of turning it into an opportunity in a short time.
As a last remark, I want to underline that nowadays, with social networks and all the technology we have available, this is even more important because everything spreads so quickly and can reach millions of people in a matter of minutes, being able to damage a company terribly if it isn’t sorted out in time.
6 thoughts on “Mistake = Opportunity”
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A mistake in every aspect of like and business can be turned into an opportunity if the desire to do so is there. Your point is well taken.
Thank you Tim, if you want to fix an error, for sure you can!
Hello; thanks for sharing this story and bit of advice with us. I think its a marvelous first post and I look forward to reading more of your work. and you are right with todays world of 24 hour news cycles and the potential tsunami of criticism that can be brought down on a business by social media you have to get it right or fix it quickly if you don’t. best of luck to you, Max
Thanks a lot Max, i’ll be uploading new content in the next days. Best of luck for you and your web too.
Hola, Alberto. I think this is a good example of turning a mistake into an opportunity as it involves the element of going beyond just correcting the shortfall but providing something exceptional beyond what was originally promised. You make a good point about the speed at which news, whether good or bad, travels in a world of social media.
Yes, when you make a mistake, to fix it properly, you can’t provide the same thing, now you have to give some extra. Thank you Paul!