posted
Have you ever screwed up so royally that there are simply no words (not the acceptable kind, anyway)? KFC just did, and for all you Rocky fans out there, the company feels like a "Kentucky Fried Idiot" for good reason: This week, a bunch of their U.K. locations kinda sorta ran out of chicken.
Not ideal, right? And that's exactly what KFC's response was, in its full-page ad. "A chicken restaurant without any chicken. It's not ideal. Huge apologies to our customers, especially those who travelled out of their way to find we were closed. And endless thanks to our KFC team members and our franchise partners for working tirelessly to improve the situation. It's been a hell of a week, but we're making progress, and every day more and more fresh chicken is being delivered to our restaurants. Thank you for bearing with us."
The response has been overwhelmingly positive. No excuses or blaming the supply chain. The situation just sucked and KFC owned it.
What's amazing to me is how noteworthy this supposedly is. Don't we always find that cutting through the CRP is the best way through a tough situation? You don't have to be a giant global restaurant chain to know this. In fact, I'll wager that the smaller you are, the smarter you have to be about it. There's no one else. It's just you. You mess up (it happens), but you don't/can't make excuses. You apologize and move on. If you can be witty about it so much the better.
Have you ever been in the position of having to say sorry for a spectacularly bad screwup, only to win in the end? What's your strategy for "owning your oops"?
