Dan Riskin

They didn't hear anything.

And the expectation was if you get an apology, you'll like the company more and you'll order from them more in the future.

They found the opposite.

When people got an apology, they were less likely to use it again.

And they added up like the lost sales over the next 90 days.

Like for the next 90 days, you're less likely to use it if you're in the group that got the apology compared to the group that did not get apologized to having both had your food be 15 minutes late.

But the money that was lost by the company was like $65,000 as a result of their apologizing.

And the mechanism is a lot of those people hadn't realized there was something wrong.

And then when you apologize, you're like, oh yeah, you did screw up.

Oh yeah, I am mad.

And so you're alerting people to a problem that they weren't aware of.

And that just makes you look worse.

I got theories.

It's just the first thing you say to get things started in a conversation.

It doesn't really mean anything.

It's just like, I am nice to you.

Yeah, I mean, it can be used passively, aggressively.

Like if somebody slams the door on you, you say, oh, I'm sorry.

Like you do say sorry when you're mad at them.

Like, I'm sorry that I got hit by the door that you forgot to hold.