Small Business 101: How to Recover From A Big Mistake

If you are typical small business owner you are probably balancing about a million things, and unfortunately mistakes, whether yours or an employees, are bound to happen. Even the biggest mistake doesn’t mean you have to shut your doors. Every mistake is a chance to learn and grow.
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Here are our 5 tips for recovering from mistakes:
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Own It
As soon as you recognize what has gone wrong, whether it be a late delivery, an incorrect email or a missed appointment, own up to it. Pretending it didn’t happen is dangerous and may bring consequences in the future. If you own what happened and get ahead of it, then you have the opportunity to save face.

Figure Out What Happened
Some mistakes are unexplainable, but with enough brain power and retracing of steps, almost every major error can be explained. This step is crucial in preventing something similar from happening again.

Apologize
Now it’s time to apologize to anyone and everyone who was affected by the mistake. This includes your employees and your customers. A phone call or face-to-face meeting will be best to portray your sincere apologies. Don’t over apologize. Once the conversation, it’s over. You’ve owned it, apologized and it’s time to move on.

Do What You Can to Fix It
Your customers will likely be less angry with you if you offer a way to fix what has gone wrong. In some situations this may simply be a refund or discount and in others this may involve sending out a correction. If there’s no clear solution to the problem, ask your customer how they would like to proceed and figure it out together.

Learn
Mistakes happen and it feels horrible, but it will feel even worse if the same thing goes wrong again. Be extremely honest with yourself, your team and your customers and make the appropriate changes to your systems or practices to ensure this same mistake won’t happen again.

The bottom line: Don’t beat yourself (or your employees) up over mistakes. Learn from what happened and prevent it from happening again.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and need to hand over a project, schedule a free consultation today.