EPISODE 41 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: How to Bounce Back From a Massive F*ck Up

Sonya:

Boy oh boy, has it been a week at KISS HQ. I've recorded this episode probably about five weeks in advance. So hopefully by now I have my shit sorted. May and June have been big, both personally and professionally. My mom, who has been unwell for eight years or so, now went downhill rapidly and passed away, which left me feeling like I had just been pushed off the side of the cliff and was falling. My body felt as though I was pumped full of adrenaline and cortisol for weeks. And I don't think I slept more than a couple of hours each night, and I'm not good on not much sleep. So yeah, I haven't been on my A game, I'll admit.

            Thankfully, my incredible team really, really stepped up and as we move further into June, and now into July, I had a moment where I sat back and went, "Wow, look what happens when I stop micromanaging and let them do their thing and take ownership." I found myself with the ability to finally, finally start working on a not-so top secret course that I've been mapping out now and talking about for two years.

            Anyway, with all of this going on, May and June have been our biggest month ever, which is amazing. We've never had so many retainer clients and projects on the go, and we've been crushing it for our clients. Our results have had me in tears, I've been so happy with what we've been achieving and how we've been impacting their businesses.

            That is, until this week, where I was in tears for another reason. We dropped the ball with one particular client over and over again, with small, stupid things, like the wrong content plan being sent or the wrong logo being used, or the web formatting being a bit off, nothing major in any of these cases, but when you have five or six small things in quick succession, it's very easy for the client to lose confidence quickly and feel the need to micromanage.

            Also, that feeling of needing to triple-check everything is exhausting and frustrating. You pay us to do a job, you don't expect to need to go back and check the work once someone has told you it's done. And that's totally, totally on me. Having faith in my team that it's been done correctly, and then I don't need to double-check anything before sending it on has been an error on my behalf, and also something I've had to talk to them about, because again, I pay them to a job, I expect it to be done right too. And the reality is this isn't laziness by them or myself, we're just busy and we're moving so quickly to get things done that the bits and pieces sometimes get overlooked and mistakes are made. We're all only human.

            So. How do you handle this of situation and restore faith with the client after you fudged up? Well, first of all, I went straight back to the client, apologized, acknowledged that we'd dropped the ball recently. No excuses, just a "Yep, we've stuffed up, and I'm sorry about the impact this has had on you and the time it's wasted for you." After a lot of apologizing and reviewing that everything has been delivered with a fine tooth comb over the past month, I also dropped off a bottle of wine with a note saying, "There has been some added stress this week. I hope this helps." I also made the decision to take back over management of their account, so everything is now personally reviewed by myself. I sat down with my team and made them aware of what was happening, and the risk of losing this account and the importance of attention to detail from all of this.

            Sometimes people are tired and need a break too. So I offered some time off to catch up on sleep, we work late hours here at KISS HQ, and I'm a big believer, if people are looking after their physical and mental health, then they're happy and produce better work with less mistakes. No-one stuffs up on purpose.

            To ease the mental load for the client, I'm also including screenshots of the completed updates within the body of the emails, so they don't have to go and search now themselves. They actually have reassurance that it is, in fact, done and this proof that it's there.

            I love it when my team does this for me, I can't tell you how many emails and notifications I get in a day. Anything that they can do to help me process information quickly is a big tick in my books. So I thought to myself, "Why don't we also do this for our clients?" They're busy building and running their businesses. They pay you in part to ease their mental load.

            It doesn't take many of these events to start shaking your own confidence as a service provider either. So making sure you are resilient and can bounce back from things like this when a client isn't happy is also really important. For me, it's about doing all I can to make sure I'm doing right by my client, but also by my team. Once I know that I've done all I can, I try and let it go. Don't dedicate more energy to wondering if the client is about to call it quits, because if they do it's devastating, but it's also a wake up call on your own internal processes sometimes, too.

            Sometimes you need to step away for a few hours, go for a run, and clean something. I know it sounds silly, but I feel like exercising gets that frustration out, and claiming your car or office seems to help with the mental clutter for me. I also like to dedicate a day to the rest of our clients, going above and beyond our contracts to show them the support, and how invested we are in their businesses.

            You know what, I'd actually love to hear your tips on bouncing back from a massive fudge up. If this has happened to you, how did you handle it? Please, look, I'm always open to hearing other suggestions as well. Shoot me a DM on Instagram, that's probably easiest. My handle is just @kiss_marketing.