Did I tell you about the time I made the mistake of doing exactly what our client asked me to do?

Sounds a little strange, but this is what happened and what it did to customer loyalty, productivity and morale.

We were way ahead of schedule on some books we were printing for a school in South Carolina. The insides and cover had been printed and would be bound together that afternoon. All 375 boxes of books would be on a truck by early evening for the short trip from North to South Carolina. We would be a record 20 days ahead of our deadline!

Our contact at the school was ecstatic and had notified everyone that the books would be there the next day. Campus mail was on stand by to distribute boxes to the various buildings. An announcement was already in the campus newspaper. She was already being heralded as a hero for getting the books to campus earlier than ever! And we were her heroes.

Then came a phone call from the bindery foreman.

He said, “Do you really want this cover on this book? There is a typo on the spine. University is spelled U-n-i-v-e-r-s-t-i-y.”

How could this be?! The type for the spine had gone through a typesetter, a proofreader, a layout person, our contact at the university, the printer, me – and NO ONE CAUGHT THIS TYPO!

I called our school contact to tell her about the error; that we would re-print the cover and deliver the books in a week. Even with this delay, we would beat our deadline by about two weeks, which was still very good. But she was so disappointed. And I was so sorry.

Her response, “Go ahead and send them. Everyone is so excited about getting the books tomorrow. Maybe no one will notice since the typo is on the spine. Most people don’t put the book on a shelf. It sits on the desk, in a stack or under the telephone. I have made all the arrangements. Send them.”

We did.

The books arrived in South Carolina the next day. As you might guess, someone higher up in the university saw the typo and refused to accept the directories.

“This is an institute of higher learning, ” he exclaimed. “We can’t have “university” spelled wrong on one of our publications.”

He sent the truckload of directories back to Chapel Hill.

What a mess.

If we had stopped the prior day – before the cover was actually put on the book, and just re-printed the cover, the cost would have been $2,000 and the process would have taken about a week.

But now – the school wanted a total re-print, which would cost $10,000 and take about three weeks.

Suddenly, none of us were heroes anymore. Far from it.

My heart sunk. And so did our bottom line.

We started brainstorming for creative solutions. One of our printers said, “Why don’t you try type-wash? It’s what pressmen use to clean ink off the presses.”

That made sense. We tried it. The type wiped right off, leaving a stark white spine. Now type-less, it looked as if nothing had ever been printed there.

We weren’t sure this would be acceptable to the university but it was worth sharing it with them.

We sent samples by over-night delivery. They accepted the solution.

Now we had to do this to 15,000 directories.

We ordered five gallons of type-wash, bought three boxes of old tee shirts (for rags) from the thrift shop, borrowed fifteen long tables, hired ten temporary workers to assist our staff of six and then set up an assembly line in the parking lot behind our building.

It took us fifteen hours to “wash” all 15,000 spines. The total cost – $1,000.

We celebrated as we sealed up the 375th box and put it back on the truck which headed back to South Carolina (for the second time) and arrived there the next day – 16 days ahead of our deadline.

While this was still quite an accomplishment – it was not the same ecstatic feeling of delivering a perfect product with ease.

This had been a mess.

With this mess though, was the opportunity to show the customer our commitment to making things right for them. And we certainly did that.

Fortunately – over the next 15 years of working with them – we never had another mess like this to resolve. But the entire time, they knew that if there ever was one, we would clean it up and make it right. This mess actually made them more loyal to us!

*****

How does the handling of this particular mess match up to the beat the heat formula shared in “Celebrating Mistakes“?

1. accept mistakes as part of “the plan”
2. accept responsibility
3. fixing them quickly
4. learn from them
5. design or re-design systems to avoid recurrence
6. nurture a culture that supports and even celebrates all of the above

We can check off #1,2 and 3.

What about #4, 5 and 6?

Well – we examined our proofreading systems. We especially spent a lot of time reviewing the spelling of “university” and actually found it spelled a number of ways (unviersity, unversity) on a number of our publications. Please note that spell-check didn’t exist yet. If it had, this would not have been a problem. Just getting my computer to let me spell “university” wrong for this article was a challenge!

We also examined the way I handled the situation. As a 25-year old in her second year of management, I needed to be a better “partner” with our clients. Having read and having been taught that the customer is always right, I said “okay” when she said “send them on”.

I would have been a better “partner” if I had encouraged her to slow down and wait a week for a more accurate product, coached her on how to handle the inconvenience of adjusting her on-campus arrangements and reminded her that she would still be ahead of schedule.

And if she still insisted on having the books sent with a typo on the spine, I would have been a better partner if I had suggested she get approval from someone higher up and with less emotional involvement in the victory of a record-breaking delivery.

Our review process included conversations with university officials in which we asked them how they felt about our “clean up.” They:

• praised the way we handled the situation.
• appreciated the way we focused on solving the problem – not on establishing blame.
• appreciated the way we adopted the problem as our own, made it our number one priority and operated swiftly.
• actually felt like we over delivered!

So what about #6?

Our entire team (and eventually the entire company) knew about this mess. We all helped create the solution which we also helped to implement. We were involved in the de-briefing sessions in which we searched for lessons learned and ways to prevent recurrence.

Through all of this, we saw the process and the value of good mistake management. We witnessed the boost in customer loyalty. We felt the boost in productivity and morale.

And though we hoped it wouldn’t happen any time soon, we knew we had the tools and attitudes and support we would need the next time we found ourselves saying, “What a mess!”

And all of that was something to celebrate.

copyright 2009 – Jan Bolick, Business Class Inc