At some point, you’re going to disappoint a customer. And while you want to give them the best experience every time, mistakes also make for fantastic opportunities to earn great word of mouth.

So when something’s broken, don’t just fix it. Fix it and then do something remarkable.

Recently, one of Mini’s servers went haywire and sent hundreds of emails to some of their customers. That one glitch could have lost them a lot of trust from their fans — trust that a mass apology email could not set back.

Instead they sent their spammed subscribers something worth much more than a polished PR response: They sent them a can of Spam, chocolate roses, and duct tape to fix things up, along with an apology letter that explained the glitch and asked for their fans’ forgiveness.

Spam apology

That says a lot about their quirky personality and even more about how much they value their fans’ trust. An apology with personality starts a lot more buzz than a sterile feedback response.

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