What’s worse: shoppers becoming mad over your mistake or shoppers becoming mad over your mistake and then subsequently becoming enraged over your ignorance toward the matter? Target understands the latter choice and is subsequently offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to any and all of its shoppers who have gotten their information stolen in the recent security breach, as many as 70 million people now.
It’s a reminder that there does lay an opportunity to win over your shoppers in the wake of a mistake. Tylenol always comes to mind as a prime case study of “mistake mitigation” when the company took proactive measures during a crisis in 1982, to rebound as an even stronger and better brand.
Lesson to learn: every mistake is an opportunity. Fix your mistakes, even if they are not your fault, and people may forgive you. They may even love you more.