At some point, we will have to reach out to a client who has no idea anything is wrong. Maybe a report went out with a number that didn't add up. Maybe a campaign went live a day after it was supposed to, or an email landed in front of the wrong list. Whatever it is, the client is going to hear about it from us, and they're going to hear about it quickly.
We follow a simple outline. What happened. What we've already fixed. What we're doing next. How we'll stop it from happening again. When we haven't figured out that last piece yet, we say so instead of faking it. There's nothing fancy about it, and I'd be lying if I said it was comfortable. It isn't. But it's how we handle mistakes at StringCan, and I've come to think it says more about a company than anything printed on a wall.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I'm on the receiving end of the opposite approach, and it's driving me nuts.
The bills on my counter
There's a pile of medical bills sitting in my kitchen right now. I'm maybe 80% sure the amounts are wrong. Not a little off, but the kind of wrong where the numbers don't match anything I can find. I've called four times. I've filed a formal appeal. I'm now in round two of that appeal, mostly out of stubbornness.
Here's what I keep coming back to: I could be wrong. I've read plenty of explanation of benefits paperwork, and I'm still not an expert. It's entirely possible a code was applied correctly, and I just don't understand how it works. If someone told me that, and showed me, I'd pay it and move on with my life.
What I can't accept is that after all those calls and a formal appeal, I'm certain nobody has looked. Nobody has pulled up the account and traced where the charge came from. There's a case number. There's activity. What there isn't, anywhere in the process, is an actual person checking whether the charge is right.
A wrong number is forgivable. A system that never checks is something else.
A typo on an invoice is about the most forgivable thing a company can do. Someone gets interrupted mid-entry. Two systems hand data back and forth and something drops. If the first person I reached had said something like "that does look odd, let me pull it up," I'd have been fine, even if the answer ended up being that I owed every penny.
Instead, I got a pattern I've now seen enough times to spot instantly. Step one, I'm asked to prove it, as if it's my job to demonstrate the error rather than theirs to check for one. (And with BCBS appeals, that's literally how it works.) Step two, the conversation shifts toward whether I really understood what I was reading. Under both of those sits the real problem, which is that no one investigates.
That's the distinction I'd draw. The wrong charge is a mistake. A process built so no one ever has to verify the charge is organizational incompetence, and that variety is expensive. A mistake costs you a correction. Refusing to look costs you the customer, the referral they would've made, and eventually your reputation. Nobody ever sends an invoice for those.
Why we call it out first (it's math, not nobility)
I want to be honest about our motivation, because it isn't virtue. By my rough estimate, a mistake a client finds on their own costs us roughly triple what one we disclose ourselves does. When they find it, we're paying for the fix itself, the trust repair, and whatever version of the story gets told at their next leadership meeting. When we call it out first, it costs one awkward conversation, and more often than you'd expect, it earns something back. People tend to remember the ones who volunteered the truth.
Where the real policy shows up
Just about every company I've worked with has some flavor of "we embrace failure" on a slide. I don't believe most of them, and not because I think they're lying. It's because I've watched what actually happens in the first two days after something breaks, and that's where the real policy lives.
In some places, that window turns curious. Somebody pulls the file. Somebody asks what happened and sounds like they want the answer. The mistake gets smaller, because nobody handling it is scared of it.
In other places, the same window runs the billing department playbook. Who approved this? Are we even sure it was wrong? Let's not blow this out of proportion. The mistake gets bigger because everyone is managing their own exposure instead of the problem, which is still sitting there untouched, waiting for someone to finally pull it up.
You won't learn which kind of company you're in by reading the values statement. Those forty-eight hours will tell you.
What I actually want
I don't need a refund, and I've stopped needing to be right. I don't want an apology or a credit toward my next visit. I want someone to open the account, read it, and tell me one of two things: we messed up, or you're wrong and here's why. Either answer would end this.
That's the standard I try to hold us to. Mistakes were never the unacceptable part. The unacceptable part is deciding ahead of time that looking is the one thing you won't do.
You made a mistake this week. I did too. Have you gone back and traced yours yet? If you find out you were the one who got it wrong, pay the bill. It's a lot cheaper than pretending the pile on the counter isn't there.
If this hits a nerve, I write about running operations and leading humans every week in my String by String newsletter on LinkedIn. Come say hi.
