Writing an Effective Apology Letter to Customers (+ 5 Examples)

No apology is less genuine than one that’s been coerced from a three-year-old: eyes down, body turned away, fists clenched, and feet threatening to stomp.

Eventually, they manage to force out a sound that could be interpreted as “sorry,” but there’s almost certainly no remorse behind it.

As adults, we learn how to offer a more mature apology that includes less foot-stomping. But giving a genuine, effective apology is still hard work! It’s particularly difficult in customer service, where there’s often a need to apologize while holding firm to your decision or turning down requests you can’t fulfill.

If you can apologize to customers effectively, you can turn around a bad situation. However, if you can’t apologize genuinely, your customers will be left to assume that you just don’t care.

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Why should you apologize to customers?

Some companies don’t allow their team members to say “I’m sorry” because they fear the legal consequences of admitting fault. That sort of attitude is infuriating to a customer who wants to hear someone take ownership of the issue.

In a New York Times article that looked at the rates of legal action taken against medical doctors by upset patients and relatives, studies found that the biggest factor in reducing legal action was encouraging the doctors to candidly admit to their patients when they had made a mistake.

A separate study found “people are more than twice as likely to forgive a company that says sorry than one that instead offers them cash.”

Acknowledgment of fault is a powerful act; it tells the customer “You are right, I see your perspective, and I understand it.” It recognizes a shared reality with the customer. It’s the opposite of the “defend and deny” approach that’s tempting to fall into.

It also helps that an effective apology costs a lot less than a court case or even a refund or discount. (“Effective” is the key word, because not every apology hits the mark. “Sorry for any inconvenience” is a phrase which now means almost the exact opposite of the words it contains.)

How to apologize to a customer

The examples below are of written apologies, which we love because an email or letter gives you more time to consider and modify your response, but the same concepts apply on the phone or in person. Here are five important aspects of an apology to a customer:

1. Be truly sorry

If you aren’t genuinely sorry for at least some part of the problem, then don’t apologize. Instead, ask questions and listen again to make sure you truly understand the situation.

Upset customers can be aggressive or extreme, perhaps because they don’t think anyone is really listening, and they can tell when you’re saying sorry without comprehending why.

Before you respond, give yourself time (and maybe a walk around the block) to understand how you are feeling, too.

My gut response can be to defend myself and try to attack the customer’s views as wrong and unfair. That doesn’t ever help, but letting myself feel that emotion, and sometimes even writing it down (not in the email — never in the email!), gives me the mental space to write a much better response.

2. Validate your customer’s feelings

You don’t have to agree with everything a customer has said, but they do need to know that you have heard them and that you acknowledge how they feel. Here are a few phrases you can include in your response to validate your customer’s feelings:

• “I know it has been really frustrating for you to be held up like this when you just want to get your job done.”

• “I understand how this has impacted your workflow. I’d be upset, too.”

• “You’re right.” (Yep, just those two words can help de-escalate the situation.)

Investigate reflective listening; it’s a valuable skill at work and at home.

3. Explain what happened

Write a full explanation of the situation as you understand it, making sure to address all the points the customer has raised. You can probably provide information that the customer may not have access to that explains where things broke down and what the consequences were.

Only when you have validated your customer’s feelings and given them a clear explanation of what happened does your apology have a chance to be accepted as genuine.

Note that you’re not just making excuses. You aren’t trying to get the customer to cut you some slack. Instead of being defensive, you’re being transparent by stating exactly what happened.

4. Admit to your mistakes

Whether it was your personal mistake or the mistake of the company, service, or product, explicitly admit to it. Be specific about what you’re apologizing for, and use the same phrases and words that your customer used. It should be a genuine and specific admission.

• “You are absolutely right; we should have made that clearer much earlier in the process.”

• “I can see now that I didn’t read your email properly, and that’s totally my fault.”

Owning your mistake is an important step in making things right with the customer and in ensuring they don’t think you’re blaming them for the problem.

5. Explain what you’ll do differently

Explain clearly what you or the company will do differently next time to avoid this happening again. This is your chance to show a commitment to improvement and to start rebuilding customer confidence. Not only that, but it gives you a chance to prevent other customers from having the same bad experience.

• “We’ve already added a new monitoring tool that will alert our Support team immediately if this happens again so that we can get on top of it quickly.”

• “I totally understand if this has been a deal-breaker for you, but I want you to know that I’m happy to explain anything in more detail or to hear from you about any other issues. Just reply to this email and it will come right back to me.”

It’s up to the customer whether or not they accept your apology, but you should make sure they know that you are there to listen and help.

How not to apologize

There are a few things that you should not include in an apology:

• Don’t make promises you can’t keep (e.g., don’t say “This will never happen again” if you can’t 100% control that.)

• Don’t trivialize or ignore the customer’s feelings (e.g., “Our other customers don’t have any problem with this.”)

• Don’t defend yourself by blaming someone else or minimizing the problem (e.g., don’t throw third party vendors under the bus.)

• Don’t over-apologize (the word “sorry” will lose all meaning if you say it too often.)

The sort of grudging “Well, it was really your fault but I guess the customer is always right” apology that some companies tend to give is worse than none at all.

5 outstanding examples of customer apology letters

If you need some inspiration to craft your own apology letter to a customer, consider these five outstanding examples.

Wealthsimple

Earlier this year I had to make a withdrawal from an investment account to put a down payment on a home. Due to some complicated paperwork requirements, the investment bank (Wealthsimple) had to initiate the withdrawal themselves.

Unfortunately, they sent the money to the wrong bank account, which made it very difficult for me to close my house purchase on time.

However, their response was excellent. They took my concerns seriously, replied quickly, and reestablished the trust I previously had in them. Here’s the apology email I received from one of the agents who worked on my case:

There are a couple of things that were done very well. First of all, even though they apologized for “the inconvenience,” they specifically called out the issues I had encountered. They explained clearly what had happened and what had led to the issues I experienced.

Second, they let me know that they were looking into what they could do to fix this for me and gave me a timeline for when they'd reply again. They set clear expectations and met them by emailing me two days later.

The agent wasn’t defensive or accusatory (even though I probably could have been clearer in my request). Instead, they were sympathetic and helpful. Altogether, it was an effective apology.

Ravelry

Earlier this year, Ravelry (a large community platform for designers, makers, and other fiber artists) underwent a controversial redesign. Many users reported experiencing migraines when using the website, while others reported issues accessing the site with screen readers or other accessibility tools.

However, Ravelry’s team of developers didn’t respond to the issues quickly. Instead, one of the Co-founders aggressively defended the site design, refusing to listen to their users’ feedback. This escalated the issue. Users of the site felt like they weren’t being listened to.

This is when Jessica, the other Co-founder, stepped in to provide the following apology.

In the letter, Jessica takes full responsibility for the issues over the last few months. She acknowledges that customers felt unheard, and she explains that the other Co-founder will solely do technical work moving forward.

Then Jessica shares what they will do to resolve the situation. She walks through their desire to potentially hire more full-time team members to help improve the user experience.

It’s clear that their Leadership team has taken the concerns seriously and will work toward a resolution that will work for everyone. While it must have taken some difficult behind-the-scenes conversations (Jessica’s wife is the other Co-founder!), they were transparent and vulnerable in their apology letter.

Caskers

If your brand image is fun and laid-back, a formal apology can seem out of character. When it’s appropriate, including humor in an apology can win your customer over.

When is it appropriate? Check out the great use of humor in Caskers’ (an online drinks company) excellent apology below.

Customers were sent a “back in stock!” notification for a product that was … very much not in stock. When Caskers realized what had happened, they sent an email to apologize for the confusion, share what had happened, and offer a discount code.

This funny apology is appropriate for this situation because the actual impact on customers was very minimal. If there had been billing issues or a loss of business operations, many customers wouldn’t have found this funny.

It also aligns with Caskers’ brand. If your brand frequently uses humor as a marketing tactic, it may also be appropriate for your genuine apologies.

Outsite

When Outsite, a co-living and co-working community, accidentally sent an email stating that members needed to make a renewal payment, they addressed the issue in the following apology letter:

Outsite did a number of things well. They clearly understood why customers were concerned about the rogue email. Customers wanted to make sure that they were not going to be charged for something they didn’t sign up for.

Outsite’s email reassured customers that there was no payment information stored, and they wouldn’t be charged. They offered a simple yet thorough explanation of what went wrong, and, as a customer reading this, I felt reassured that Outsite had the issue under control.

GitLab

One of the toughest apologies to write is an outage apology. Even a short outage can have a big impact on your customers’ businesses, and they can easily lose faith in your ability to deliver the service you’ve promised.

So when GitLab had a really bad day that resulted in several hours of downtime alongside lost production data, they needed to regain the trust of their customers.

Their apology not only reassured their existing customers that they had everything under control, but it also garnered them positive publicity from a wider audience.

Why did this apology work so well? GitLab committed to being radically transparent throughout the entire process. They had a public Google Doc where they shared updates, they live-streamed their Engineering team working on the issues, and they tweeted from @GitLabStatus using the hashtag #hugops.

This level of honesty won them many fans over the day, along with sympathy from Ops teams who had been there in the past.

After it was all over, GitLab published a lengthy post-mortem blog post sharing what they had learned and explaining how they would prevent this from happening in the future.

An incident that could have been a business-ending mistake may have been their biggest success story. They now boast a user base of over 100,000 businesses.

Is it too late now to say sorry?

The ability to apologize effectively is a skill that can be practiced regularly, from small misunderstandings to larger tech issues and everything in between. The value it will bring to your business (and your personal life!) is immeasurable.

The best part: With practice, anyone can do it (even, I hear, three-year-olds).