How do you bounce back from business blunders? 😬 😓

[ElisabethB]

Mistakes, missteps, and miscalculations: we've all been through them, but even a minor slip-up can be a make-or-break situation for a business. What were some of your biggest "oops!" moments, and how did you set things right? Share your experiences below! 🙂

[Candlestore]

Our biggest mistake so far has been giving a 50% discount on an item because staff miss read the $19.99 price as $9.99.  This would not be bad if it was one item but the person wanted 40 of them at $20 would have been an $800 sale, we got $400 for the deal and did not even make the cost of that Item.  The $20 price was a sale price already.  I noticed this after I helped load the person and then looked at the sale and saw the customer was charged $9.99 when the customer asked me I said $9.99 for them but staff said $9.99 and rang up the sale that way.  Needless to say I was not happy!!  Now I can say this happened shortly after buying the business, we figured out why this happened and since that one time it has not happened again.  

Here were the problems:

1) No Scanner to scan Item at Checkout, prices had to be manually entered for every item.

2) Teller was not wearing glasses and misread the Marked price.

3) The ink for Price gun was low when item was marked and the "1" was hard to see.

Solution:

1) Upgraded Registers from old Cash Register to new at the time Square Stands with Scanners.

2) Teller got new glasses that she liked better after her eye exam.  lol

3) No old price guns, we print our own with thermal or thermal transfer printers now.  Prices are clearer and can be Scanned.

So you asked how we recovered from that mistake.  You can never make up for a missed opportunity or sale.  Now a $400 loss is a big loss when you look at it for a day but when you look at it over a week it is not as bad or over a month is even less and when over a year it is barely a loss.   Got to get your perspective in place, how much you lost on that ONE mistake.  Just remember we are all human and make mistakes, now if the SAME 'Mistake' keeps happening that is a bigger problem.  What you can do is LEARN from the Mistake, adjust to make sure it does not happen again.  For me it is not like I could call the customer and say we made an error please come back to the store so we can charge you $400 more.  She had a receipt for the items, and it was our stores mistake.  Calling the customer would have given us a bad name with a bad review or court trying to fight this.  So, I marked it in our books as a $400 education write off, for going to the school of hard knocks.  Needless to say my accountant got a laugh, and said that is not an education.   I tried to say, well we learned from it, does that not count as Education?   LOL   

[ElisabethB]

@Candlestore - Love this story! Well, I don't love that you lost out on $400, but I do love how you identified and resolved all of the factors that contributed to the situation, and especially pointing out the importance of not losing perspective. Thank you for sharing! 😊

[JUYBoutique20]

I definitely think that was an educational write off.  So glad to see you guys were able to go forward and make it so that the likely hood of this happening again was a no go.

[BB_Co]

Thanks for sharing your story. I was starting to feel like I was the only one with a similar experience.

[joannaemmeth]

Thanks for the insight... a couple weeks ago I ordered specialty flowers for someone in a pinch..I wanted to help. So I spent 500 of my money for a $150 order, thinking I could sell the rest in shop...Im super new had no walk ins and ate a lot of the product...I have been beating myself up for three weeks now...got to let it go and let people know I can't get some things overnighted and me cover the cost.

Sincerely,

Joanna-The Red Poppy-Columbus Indiana

[OldCoder]

I use my own hand rolled POS system with a square terminal , remember those?  🙂

Anyway, I was pretty kinda certain that I had the split-sale code all ready for prime time but nobody 

asked to split sales until a group of people did. a $320.00 sale where 100.00 in cash was handed over

and 220.00 was going on a card. The code blew up so they got away before I realized it for 220.00.

next day I pulled the 100.00 out of my bank and put it in the cash drawer.

Fixed the bug and I have waited all winter for another split but none thus far. 🙂

It works now, I promise! 😉

Really

[ElisabethB]

Oh no, @OldCoder - I'm glad you got that figured out before it happened again! 🙈

[Heatman1]

Very Easy, Just get back to Job Super Fast and make GOOD on any problem l

that may be happening. Thing's happen BUT Super Quick Response is EVERYTHING!

All of my Clients call us back No Matter What because of 1 on 1 Customer Service ALWAYS BEETS THE LARGE COMPANY'S ! They Drag there feet after they got your $$$. Not RICVHARD'S HEATING & AIR CONDITIONING IN HAMILTON TWP. OWNER IA AWESOME DEALING WITH CLIENTS OVER 34 YEARS SERVING MERCER & N.J.

[ElisabethB]

@Heatman1 Love that outlook - customer service can really make or break a business's reputation. 

[JUYBoutique20]

For us our biggest mistake so far was discount related.  My hubby was working the store that morning and marked a whole rack of new arrivals as discount merchandise.  None of the items run up so he manually adjusted the price. Thankfully he had only sold a few items off the rack by the time I made it in.  The lesson for the day was if it doesn't automatically ring up as a discount it's probably not on sale.

[ElisabethB]

Whoops! 😅 Good to hear you caught that quickly, @JUYBoutique20! 

[rtfulk]

Funny this question should come up right now, this is a long story. As most know we are a mobile business and work State Fairs and festivals. We just finished one of our bigger festivals this past week. Here is the back story. This is the only fair we work that we are outside, when I say outside it’s more like a row of storage units with roll up doors and a 12 ft. Shelter/porch built out from it (what it really is, is an old national guard armory). Anyway there is a small grassy area in front of us and there is always different type of entertainment there every year. This year it was the flying jet pack circus, what is that you ask:). It is basically a jet ski with a 50 ft hose attached to the thrust end and connects to a pair of boots. The thrust comes out of the boots and the person wearing the boots does tricks.

In order for them to do this, they brought in a pop up pool which was 3.5 ft deep, 30 ft wide x 60 ft. Long and holds 60,000 gallons of water. There was a lot of force on that pool and we worried every show it would be the last one. Wednesday morning at 9:55 am right before the fair opened, guess what happened? The pool ripped and 60,000 gallons on water came rushing in our booths (we had 5 booths) we were in the booth and saw it coming and there was nothing we could do, just stood there frozen. The force was so strong it almost knocked us down, we started scrambling to get clothes that was on the lower racks moved higher, then maintenance came in yelling for everyone to get out there were live wires exposed. So here we are standing in over ankle deep water grabbing clothes and there are live wires, we tell our employees to drop the clothes and get out of the water. Tammy is in tears while we stand and watching our booth flooded. I told here we will be here all night getting everything ready to reopen.

The fair had already called the city to send out a pump truck and they got there about 10:40 am and in 10 minutes had ll the water pumped out of the area. It wasn’t just our booth, there were 12 booths on our side and 12 behind us, the water flooded the backside also. Since we are mobile everything is on wheels except for our grid work along the walls. so when the water was gone and the power was turned off I rolled everything outside, by the time I had done that the fair sent a cleaning crew over and they jumped in and started squeegeeing the floor and mopping, they had it cleaned in about 45 minutes. I was cleaning the display racks and Tammy was going through taking photos of the damaged items and inventorying it. We don’t know how it happened, but we were back open and selling by 3:30 that afternoon. We could have never done it with the help of the cleaning crew and fair. The insurance adjuster came by the next day and told us not to worry the jet ski circus insurance would cover everything, we will find out in a couple of days.

I guess the moral of our story is no matter how bad something looks, just attack it head on and never give up. I would upload photos, but can’t find the link to do it.

[ElisabethB]

@rtfulk Wow, this is an incredible story in every possible way - thank you for sharing! 😮 It's awesome how quickly you were able to recover and that their insurance will cover your damages!

[rtfulk]

Yes, at first we thought we would be there all night working, but the festival really helped us out with the cleanup crew.

[AdamB]

I got to "wearing jet skis in a giant inflatable pool" and immediately thought, "what could go wrong?" 🤣

Glad to hear that it was cleaned up quickly and insurance will help cover the losses for you!

[rtfulk]

That is what we said when they rolled in and started setting it up.

[HoosierQue]

Crazy story! What fair was this at?

[rtfulk]

Florida Strawberry Festival.

[ProsperityPools]

A big "oops" can be allowing for a customer to pressure you, even when you know what is best and you are the expert. We do pool repairs, maintenance and remodels. Sometimes a customer will see something on YouTube (i.e. - ways to save money by running your pool at night instead of during the day, or blah, blah). So it is important not to allow them to run the show if they are paying you for the service, because it can end up costing more in chemicals, extra trips to the customers' house to fix broken equipment, etc.  So, it is important to explain to the customer up front that if they are paying for the service, they must also do their part by following the advice you give them, otherwise it will not work out for either party.

Another example was a pool we remodeled. Plastering a pool costs thousands of dollars, so it is important to get it right. We have never had to re-plaster a pool because we are meticulous about doing it right, but one time a customer pressured us (see above as to why this is bad) to "hurry" and we explained it is not a good idea to do so, because the plaster must cure and also must have a few dry days or barely any rain for a few days in the forecast. So because of this forced pressure and caving to a customer's pressure, their spa ended up being a different shade of blue and there was a ring around the middle of it. Fortunately, our plaster contractors offer a warranty and we were able to get it fixed. But the lesson for us was not to let customers pressure you into doing something you know is a bad idea or going against your own policies.

There is a saying that the "customer is always right" and this is NOT a saying that applies to our industry! LOL  We have learned to be more intuitive and stick to what we know is right, even if a customer is demanding or trying to do things their own way. If we get people like this (which is rare), we usually let them go and move on to avoid future headaches. Most of our customers are wonderful and easy to work with and very pleased, but there are always people in this world that are not going to be happy no matter what you do, because they are either stubborn and set in their ways or those I like to call "know-it-alls". That is only a small fraction, I'd say 98% are awesome and like part of our extended family. 🙂

That's it... always listen to your instincts in business and don't deviate from your own policies.

[ElisabethB]

Love that advice, @ProsperityPools - it really does pay to follow your instincts, especially when you are the expert. Pools and spas are way too complex and pricey to fool around with, and customers should trust your expertise.