Castlevania is a classic video game I first played in 1986, and instantly fell in love with. It’s a platformer with amazing music, crisp graphics, and monsters. Lots and lots of monsters.

The game is very rewarding–but can also be brutally, frustratingly difficult. Just like being a product manager.

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A new Product Manager finds a note and three envelopes on his desk. The note is from his predecessor, and it says, “I’ve left you three envelopes. If you encounter a problem you can’t resolve, open one of the envelopes…”

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Last time we looked at three truly terrible ways businesses have apologized to customers.

Today, we’ll discuss the elements of truly great apologies–with examples. And see what we can learn from the experience I had recently apologizing to thousands of confused, angry, and irritated customers…

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“I’m sorry.” Two tiny words. Two tiny words that said the right way can help repair broken trust, and said incorrectly can burn bridges forever.

Brought to you by the marketing department at Pepsi

Business school didn’t teach me the art and science of how to apologize appropriately and effectively. (That’s something life and server outages have drilled into me.) Judging from some of the corporate apologies we’ve seen recently, we all have a lot still to learn.

Today, we’ll look at three examples of truly terrible ways to apologize. Next time, we’ll discuss the elements of a truly great apology–and see if the major outage we had this week on the product I lead yields any lessons that could benefit product managers who finds themselves in a similar situation.

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