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I have been dealing with a load of tradespeople on my kitchen renovation. The excuses they devise for why something can’t happen are amazing. Today, we will look closer at excuses regarding why people give them and what you can take away from that exchange.
To be fair, it isn’t only tradespeople who give me excuses. Who hasn’t heard excuses when interacting with companies in various Customer Experiences?
For example, I have called into places and waited long because “the call center is experiencing a high call volume.” Are they, or did they decide to cut back on labor and have fewer people there to answer the normal number of calls they receive?
I suspect it’s the latter.
Another example was a radiator I purchased from a retailer. There was a problem, so I contacted the retailer where I bought it. However, they transferred me to the manufacturer when I had a problem. I was baffled because I didn’t buy it from the manufacturer, so why did I need to call them? It felt like I was doing the retailer’s job for them.
Jasper Carrott is a British comedian from the Midlands. He had a bid where he would get insurance claims and read out what people wrote on them. Here is an example:
If you didn’t watch the video, I summarized five of the excuses he mentions:
- So, going out of my drive this morning, I drove straight into a bus. It wasn’t my fault. It was five minutes early.
- I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree that I haven’t got.
- The accident was caused by me waving to the man I hit last week.
- I knocked down a man. He admitted it was his fault; he’d been knocked down before.
- I’ve been driving for 40 years before I fell asleep at the wheel.
What’s the difference between an excuse and a reason? One way to see it is that an excuse is about avoiding consequences. You don’t have to make it right if it isn’t your fault.
By contrast, a reason or explanation is taking responsibility and recognizing a need to make things right. For example, if a company can’t install a radiator when promised, the company could explain why, apologize for it, offer another installation time, or maybe even a discount.
Another way to distinguish them is by their definitions. A reason explains why something has happened based on facts. It offers understanding and justification without the intent to deflect blame or responsibilities. An excuse, on the other hand, is often used to minimize, avoid criticism, or justify poor performance. It might reflect real or fabricated circumstances, but its main purpose is to shield somebody from accountability.
Humans Don’t Take The Blame
The behavioral sciences use terms to explain why people do various things. There are even some that help us understand the underlying reasons why we don’t fancy taking the blame.
First, we like to see ourselves as right. Admitting that you were wrong or that you failed at something feels terrible. I would argue that the same concept underlies our consumer decision-making, too.
Whether avoiding blame or ensuring that our buying decision was sound, we want to feel right. In these cases, we experience Confirmation Bias, where we only consider what reinforces our idea rather than all the information available regarding the situation.
Even for relatively trivial consumer purchases, we often need to feel we made the right choice. It engenders decision biases on our part.
If something has gone wrong and we need to explain it, we might tell the story in a way that demonstrates that the fault is not ours and that we did the best we could under the circumstances. It is a fundamental human motivation that drives a lot of what we do, including, in this case, excuse-making.
However, a leader admitting they were wrong to their team goes a long way to strengthen your relationship. I learned years ago that “leadership can emerge from anywhere,” including the wake of a mistake in judgment or direction on the part of the boss.
I still come up with lots of excuses. But it works out for me in some situations when I choose not to.
We had an electrician do something in the kitchen with the lights. When there was a problem, and I asked him to come sort it out, he said it was the garage lights, not the kitchen lights, that had a problem. They didn’t, and we both knew it, but he gave the excuse anyway.
The electrician has a good reason for doing this. When he gets something wrong, he has to fix it, and he can’t charge for the time. Plus, it prevents him from working on a new job. So, I understand the excuses and his quick draw on coming up with them. He is inclined to do so based on his business model and compensation.
But I still don’t like it.
Electricians and other tradespeople, notwithstanding, many of us make excuses because of ego. We need to be right. People with low self-esteem and presumably a smaller ego also provide excuses—some say it’s universal.
Fundamental attribution error is an interesting phenomenon that might also be at work here. Attribution, in psychology speak, is the word for assigning blame regarding the cause of something. Over and over, people attribute fault based on general assumptions about people that might not be true. Hence, the term fundamental attribution error.
For example, if I am associated with a situation that went wrong, someone might blame me because they think I am rude, and rude people will do things like that. So, they have not only attributed the blame to me but also passed judgment about my character.
However, in this fictional situation where someone blamed me for the outcome, it could have been a stressful afternoon that inspired a less-than-polite response from me. So, I am not a rude person; it was just a bad moment. Hence, the error in the phenomenon’s name.
The fundamental part of the term comes from the idea that we all do this. We are almost always more willing to give ourselves grace than others in such situations.
Problems with the Post
In England, there’s a scandal in the post office. An accounting software glitch has been overcharging some proprietors for years. Unfortunately, the government knew and covered it up…for years!
To explain how this could happen, perhaps I should explain how the post works in England. The system has different outposts called sub-post offices. You find these in a small town or village, which may have a post office attached to a grocery store or café.
The accounting system called Horizon kept track of the balances of the proprietors of these sub-post offices. It would report that the proprietor had taken in £ 10,000 but paid out £ 20,000. The software then informed the proprietor that the shortfall was theirs to cover.
Once the government realized that this was happening and that a bug in the program caused the shortfall, they covered it up instead of coming clean. That was a big mistake because it is all coming to light now. It has cost millions, and people have gone to prison for it.
Will you go to prison for making excuses? Probably not. But this English post example shows that if you make an excuse about something significant, all hell breaks loose, and people end up behind bars.
So, What Should You Take Away From This Discussion?
A lot of times, our intuitions serve us very well. They help us be more efficient. Our reflex to make an excuse to avoid blame is one of the cases where our intuition will try to defend our ego and make us feel like we were right.
It may also be a case where it is useful to fight against that intuitive response. In many cases, you can gain a lot from taking responsibility instead of trying to deflect it, even though that is our natural move.
From a customer experience perspective, if I were running a customer service team, consider whether you are giving customers excuses because you don’t want to accept blame. If so, stop and examine what you can learn from the situation.
It comes down to the word trust. You can tell when you hear an excuse, and someone tells you something untrue—these aren’t good for the relationship or trust.
Therefore, I would advise organizations to take the blame when they should. It gives people the opportunity to exercise their understanding. But coming up with excuses is inexcusable.
So, if there is a situation where you should take the blame, do so. Also, have what you intend to do to remedy the problem. Also, if possible, include how you will change the process to avoid the situation moving forward.
Using this strategy, most customers will give you the benefit of the doubt. Many great, strong relationships with customers have been built upon resolving a bad experience. Bringing someone back from a negative experience is a feat of Customer Experience that one could never pull off by giving an excuse.
Things happen and go wrong. Most people will understand and forgive. What they won’t understand or forgive is an excuse based on a false representation of what happened.
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