Responsibility differentiates you from other business

Your organization may not be fully responsible for the problem, but your statement has to express that you understand the situation and your customers want YOU to find out what happened and be sure of every possible action will be taken.

The economist Milton Friedman once said that a business’s sole purpose is to generate profit for shareholders. Moreover, he maintained, companies that did adopt "responsible" attitudes would be faced with more binding constraints than companies that did not, rendering them less competitive.

Do apologies matter to investors? About $1 billion was wiped off the value of United Airlines shares after CEO Oscar Munoz’s response toward footage of the airlines staff forcibly dragging a passenger off an overbooked plane.

Back in 2018, after Elon Musk publicly apologized for criticizing an analyst, Tesla’s share value soared by almost $5 billion, made it maybe the most valuable apology of all time.

Besides the immediate market reaction, an insincere or halfhearted apology would show a lack of desire to make necessary changes to how the companies are run.

So what makes a #goodApology? First, take responsibility. Be direct and specific with your words with action. Starbucks’ apology “I own it” satisfies this criteria.