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Comment by rbarooah | Hacker News Reader

This a good analysis.

I wonder though whether over time this kind of understanding is just going to become a formula or best practice that ends up being handled by a PR department.

If it does, then how will we detect an authentic apology from a formulaic one?

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How, you ask, can we tell if a smooth-sounding apology is genuine? Well, that "What we're going to do about it" part really shines through here. That's not just coming from the PR department, or if it is then it's a rather unusual company. Besides, if the apology is made sincerely and publicly and efforts are made to prevent a recurrence then I'm not sure I CARE whether it is "genuine" -- the effect is the same either way.

I think most PR people already know the formula. So for big companies it is hard to tell when it is genuine (and when you are speaking for 10,000 people, some of it is genuine and some of it is not, employees have their own personal opinions).

But for small companies the founder's bias just comes right through. If the founder isn't really apologetic they will end up writing a half-apology, even if they know this formula. The formula really requires you to own up to the full responsibility and sometimes the founders don't want to.

Presumably only by observing a company over time: does their behaviour change? Have they kept their promises for how they're going to fix it?

An excellent point... but to be honest, if every company reacted like this when they screwed up it wouldn't actually be a bad thing :-)

It would if it was just a rote statement that they hadn't thought about.

A bit like the call centers which effusively state "I'd be more than happy to help you with that" after each thing you say to them.

I don't think they can do rote statements. They have to explain what caused the problem, explain what they are going to do to prevent the issue occuring again and admit that they cocked up. Nothing really very rote about that!

I guess that would apply equally to companies who botched their statement of apology but actually took a lot of steps to improve things.

The point is that over time this makes the apology itself moot.

It already more or less is; the idea is not new, and decent PR people will already do something very similar (if they are allowed to do so; some companies will be unwilling to admit guilt, whether through fear of liability or pride).

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