Service and Experience with J. N. Halm: The science of sorry: Why how you apologise to a customer matter more than the apology itself

“I am sorry.”

Two words. A combined four syllables. And yet, in the world of customer service, these two words—or the failure to say them—can be the difference between a customer who forgives and returns, and one who walks away permanently. Most businesses understand, at least in theory, the importance of apologising to customers when things go wrong.

What far fewer businesses understand is that not all apologies are created equal. The manner of the apology, the language used, the orientation it takes—all of these things matter enormously. And the science behind this, it turns out, is far more sophisticated than most of our organisations realise.

A study published in the September 2025 edition of the Journal of Business Research set out to examine exactly this question. The study was titled, “Beyond “I Am Sorry”: Investigating the Impacts of Apology Type and Language Style on Customer Forgiveness in Service Recovery.”

The researchers were interested in how different types of apologies and different styles of language influence whether a customer actually forgives a business after a service failure. The findings of their study should be required reading for anyone who trains frontline staff, designs complaint handling processes, or has responsibility for service recovery in any kind of organisation.

Let me set the scene first. In every business, sooner or later, something goes wrong. A bank processes a transaction incorrectly. A hotel assigns the wrong room. A delivery arrives late or damaged. A restaurant gets an order completely wrong.

These are not exceptional events — they are the routine hazards of any operation that involves human beings at scale. What matters, in these moments, is not just whether the organisation apologises, but how it apologises.

The researchers identified two distinct types of apology. The first is what they call a Responsibility-Oriented Apology. This is the kind of apology where the person or organisation accepts accountability. It is not merely an expression of sympathy for the customer’s inconvenience — it is an acknowledgement of fault.

“We got this wrong, and we are responsible for that.” The second type is a Sympathy-Oriented Apology. This is more of an expression of regret for the customer’s experience without a clear acceptance of blame. “We are sorry to hear that you had this experience.”

Many businesses, particularly those with large legal teams and risk-conscious management, gravitate toward the sympathy-oriented apology because it feels safer. Admitting fault might open the door to liability. Expressing sympathy, on the other hand, communicates care without conceding culpability. It sounds apologetic while keeping the organisation’s legal position intact.

The research, however, is not kind to this approach. The study found that when it comes to what the researchers call “decisional forgiveness”—the customer’s conscious decision to forgive the organisation and give it another chance—Responsibility-Oriented Apologies are significantly more effective. Customers are more willing to forgive an organisation that dares to say “we were wrong” than one that hides behind a vague expression of sympathy.

This makes intuitive sense when one thinks about it from the customer’s perspective. A Sympathy-Oriented Apology, however warmly delivered, can feel evasive. The customer knows what happened.

They know the organisation made a mistake. When the organisation responds by saying “we are sorry you feel that way” rather than “we are sorry we did that”, the customer can feel—rightly—that they are not being taken seriously. The Sympathy-Oriented Apology, far from soothing the customer, can actually deepen the wound.

But the study goes further than simply establishing that one apology type is better than the other. The researchers also examined the role of language style — specifically, the difference between literal and figurative language — in shaping the emotional impact of an apology. Literal language is straightforward. Direct.

Figurative language uses imagery, metaphor, and creative expression to convey meaning. And what the researchers found is that figurative language enhances what they call “emotional forgiveness”—the deeper, more heartfelt kind of forgiveness—when used alongside a responsibility-oriented apology.

In other words, it is not enough to take responsibility. How you express that responsibility also matters. An apology delivered in the flat, corporate language of a form letter may technically say all the right things, but fail to move the customer emotionally.

An apology that uses warmer, more evocative language—that speaks to the customer as a person rather than a complaint reference number—can reach them at a level that creates genuine reconciliation rather than mere transactional resolution.

The study identifies a pathway worth noting: when the language of the apology is crafted in a way that makes the customer feel that the organisation is being genuinely sincere, emotional forgiveness follows. And emotional forgiveness, in turn, leads to decisional forgiveness. The customer who feels truly heard and genuinely apologised to is the customer who decides to stay.

Sincerity, as it turns out, is not just a virtue—it is a strategy.

Now, let us bring all of this closer to home. In Ghana, service recovery is a concept that many organisations have not yet fully grappled with. When things go wrong—and they do, frequently, in every sector from banking to healthcare to hospitality—the standard response in many organisations is to defend, deflect, or delay. Customers who complain are sometimes made to feel that the problem is of their own making.

Others are met with a torrent of bureaucratic processes designed, it seems, to wear them out rather than resolve their concerns. And when an apology is finally offered, it is often a perfunctory, box-ticking affair—the kind that says all the obligatory words but conveys none of the genuine acknowledgement that a wronged customer actually needs.

Part of the problem is that many of our organisations have not invested seriously in training their frontline staff in the art and science of apology. We train people in product knowledge. We train them in systems and processes. We may even train them in general communication skills.

But the specific skill of recovering a customer who has been let down—knowing what kind of apology to offer, how to phrase it, how to strike the tone that says “we mean this”—is rarely addressed with the depth it deserves.

The researchers emphasise the importance of internal marketing efforts aimed at building exactly this kind of capability in employees. This is not a luxury. It is a business necessity.

Because every service failure that is handled badly is a customer potentially lost forever. And in an era of social media, it is also a story that can be told to thousands of other potential customers within minutes of the incident occurring.

There is also something worth saying about the leadership dimension of all this. Employees apologise the way they see their leaders apologise.

If the organisational culture is one in which admitting fault is seen as weakness, employees will default to the sympathy-oriented, responsibility-avoiding apology because that is the culture they have absorbed.

If, on the other hand, leaders model the courage to say “we got this wrong, and here is what we are going to do about it”, that posture filters down through the organisation.

The science of sorry, as it turns out, is not really science at all. It is character. It is the willingness to stand in front of a customer who has been wronged and say—clearly, warmly, and without equivocation—that you know it, you own it, and you intend to make it right.

That is the apology that forgiveness is made of.

Post Views: 51