No matter how much effort, time and money a company spends they are sure to make mistakes. When you do it is important you handle it properly and respond with honesty and transparency. In fact, when you own up to your mistakes and explain them openly you earn the respect of reasonable people. That’s exactly what Google earned today in my books.
For a couple of hours today Gmail went down. This is a big deal for VendAsta because we use Google Apps for business which includes Gmail for business. It’s a service we pay for and depend on. When Gmail went down today our company was essentially without email (oh the horror!). I must admit, I questioned our decision to go with this solution.
However, Google handle this failure brilliantly. They acknowledged it, they kept us up to date , they apologized and they told what they were going to do to prevent it from happening again. In short they turned a potentially damaging situation into an opportunity to enhance their reputation.
This is a great example of brilliant reputation management!
