How Businesses Lose Customers: A Story About Accountability
When I started my design business, my main motto was simple: treat my clients the way I’d like to be treated. Not everyone will experience what it’s like to be a business owner or work in customer service, but everyone, at some point, has been a customer. So, I took notes. I paid attention to my experiences with businesses and focused on how it made me feel. Did I feel valued? Would I shop there again? From these experiences, I shaped the principles of my own business, deciding what to embrace and what to leave behind.
Most of us are regular people who work incredibly hard for what we have—and even harder for the things we want. We put in extra hours, save diligently, and carefully consider our purchases. We know the true value of our money because we’re the ones earning it. That’s why, as a business owner, especially of in the non-essential service industry, I never take it for granted when someone chooses to invest their hard-earned money in my work. Every purchase, every order, every project—it all matters to me because my clients had a choice, and they chose me. That means the world.
Unfortunately, I’ve been on the other side of that trust being broken.
A while ago, I visited a well-known repair shop at the Regent Multiplex Mall to replace my iPhone battery. My phone was in working order, but the battery was below 60% and had a note that it needed to be serviced. The store’s price was slightly higher than usual, but the location seemed trustworthy, and the technician was polite and eager to help. After the repair, I tested my phone and realized the speaker no longer worked. I immediately brought it to their attention, but the technician insisted there was nothing he could do to fix it. When I asked for a refund, the owner stepped in, and suddenly, I was the problem. They claimed I had brought in a defective phone, dismissed my concerns, and even suggested I pay extra to fix the speaker—a problem that didn’t exist before the repair. To make matters worse, fixing the speaker would mean losing Face ID functionality. No matter what I did, I was at a disadvantage.
In the end, I paid to replace the speaker—after all, a phone without a working speaker isn’t very functional.
That experience didn’t just frustrate me—it made me reflect on the importance of trust in business. I walked in with a working phone, spent additional money to fix someone elses mistake, and walked out feeling unheard, undervalued, and with a phone that no longer functioned the same.
I’m not here to tell anyone how to run their business, but if there’s one piece of advice I’d offer, it’s this: never let your customers suffer for your mistakes. Mistakes happen—we misquote prices, miss deadlines, or forget to respond to client messages. It’s part of the learning curve. But when those mistakes affect our clients, we have a choice: ignore them and risk losing trust; or take responsibility and make things right. The customer may still be upset, and we can’t always undo the damages, but taking accountability and working to improve is what builds a business that lasts.
Because at the end of the day, trust is everything. And as business owners, it’s up to us to earn it—and keep it.
