Tiger Woods was on TV the other day saying how sorry he was for his mistake, and how it would never happen again.

Did you believe him?

The problem with “sorry” is that words are cheap. We’ve all read about the celebrity or politician or Minister of Propaganda from a third-world country who said something with total conviction one day, and we learned the truth was exactly the opposite the next. As consumers, we’ve become jaded. We don’t trust apologies anymore.

So what happens when your client didn’t get the prints they ordered from you on time? Did you say you were sorry? Do you think they really believed you?

As a business owner, you’ve got to follow Harry Truman’s old adage, “the buck stops here.” Here are the steps you need to take when your studio makes a mistake on an order:

Don’t play the blame game

It is human nature when something goes wrong to blurt out the name of someone else to pin the blame on (the dog ate my homework, my staff screwed up). It is a natural defense mechanism we all share. But as a business owner, you have to take full responsibility for any mistake that comes out of your studio. Don’t shift the blame. Say you’re sorry, and tell your client you’ll personally fix it. It makes them think their problem is important to you, and by inference, that they are important too.

Change a policy or process, then tell them about it

If the complaint is the result of a mix-up in communication, or someone dropped the ball at your studio, don’t just fix the customer’s problem – fix your own. Chances are the complaint you hear is only the tip of the iceberg. Then once you’ve made the fix, let your client know that their complaint resulted in a real change to your business. Again, it makes them feel that you took them seriously.

Thank your client for their complaint

For every client who complains, ten say nothing, then bad-mouth you behind your back. When you get a complaint, thank them for taking the time to bring the problem to your attention. After all, aren’t they really helping you to build a better business? Besides, nobody says “thank you” when you bring them a problem. It will immediately make them feel better about the complaint, and hopefully earn you their forgiveness.

Reward your client for their complaint

If they ordered one print, give them two. Would you rather spend an extra $2.55 on an 8×10 print or lose a client? (hint: it costs you a lot more than $2.55 to find a new client).

Follow up

Here’s an example of an note I’d want to receive if you sent me the wrong print:

Dear Tom,

I want to personally apologize for the mistake made on your order. Because of your call, we’ve improved our client services. Phoned-in order changes are now immediately confirmed by e-mail. This problem won’t happen again.

I’ve enclosed an extra copy of the 8×10 print as my way of saying “thank you” for bringing this to my attention. I really do appreciate it.

I look forward to serving you again in the future.

Regards,

John

The next time your studio makes a mistake, give this a try. It works better than saying “I’m sorry“.

JD has upgraded the shipping program to include a new shipping notification email with order number and tracking information that is delivered as each order is processed by the shipping department.

Watch for this email when your next order ships from JD.

As a customer, when you receive this email, you know that your order is literally boxed and ready to be placed on the delivery truck. However, the tracking number may not report the package location until later that evening.

This email replaces the old ones from UPS, which did not have as much information.

I read an interesting article online entitled “The Lazy Rule of Thirds” by fashion photographer Jake Garn. He argues that the “rule of thirds” we’ve all been taught in photography is really just a shortcut to take photographs that follow the Golden Ratio.

Stick with me.

Over 2,500 years ago mathematicians figured out that if you drew a rectangle or a curve where the ratio of the height to the width was approximately 1.6, it just looked better. Without going into all the math, it turns out that nature uses this same ratio too: everything from flower petals to the branching of veins inside your body follows this pattern. Artists started using the Golden Ratio, and evidence of it is found in the Greek Parthanon, works by Leonardo Da Vinci, and even paintings by Salvador Dali.

Notice in the image above, if you draw a successive series of curves based on the Golden Ratio, the bigger rectangle on the left is approximately two-thirds of the total area. The logic is that instead of trying to teach us knuckleheads the Golden Ratio in Beginning Photography 101 class, the teachers simplified it into the Rule of Thirds.

Think this doesn’t work? After I read Jake’s article, I found a transparent .PNG file of the curve online (you don’t even want to know why it is called the Fibonacci spiral), copied it to my desktop, and opened it in Photoshop. Then I found a really nice image done by the folks over at Classic Concepts Studio in Durand, and dragged the curve on top of the image as a new layer. I resized the spiral by dragging the corner with the shift key held down so it wouldn’t lose proportion, rotated it, mirrored it, and colored it with a red stroke.

This is the result.

I always knew I really liked this image, but I never knew why. Now I’m going back over other images and dropping the spiral on top. I can’t say every good image matches perfectly, but I can say that the bad ones don’t even come close.

If I were making an image for a competition, I’d have this spiral file saved on my hard drive and use it to help me with composition and cropping. It might just be the secret ingredient I needed to create the perfect award-winning image.

Do you have any images to share that match up with the Golden Ratio? Send them to me as a 250x200px 72dpi JPG and I’ll post them here.