Admit it – we all make mistakes. No one is perfect and every now and then we mess up. Hopefully your mistakes aren’t life threatening and hopefully you work diligently to minimize your mistakes and eliminate them as much as possible. When you do trip up, do you own your mistakes? Do you take responsibility for your mistakes and the consequences of your actions or lack of action? M-Go does. M-Go is an online movie streaming service that brings the magic of Hollywood to your internet connected device. No, this is not an advertisement for M-Go, but a real life example of a brand taking responsibility for their short comings, their human-ness. Apparently real people work on the other end of these wires we call the internet because they did a very humble thing – they took responsiblity for their mistake and tried to make it better.

Here’s the first email I got from them that got me really excited:

When I received that email out of the blue, I was stoked! Whoa – a free movie! It’s my lucky day! Now, I had just signed up for the service a few days before this and already used my free “thanks for signing up” offer and now here is another free movie on my account. BONUS!

Then…I got this email:

I can’t describe the sinking feeling I got when I received this email. At first I was sad and upset that they took away my free prize and after a minute I felt myself getting angry. WHOA! You’re going to give me a free movie then take it away…uh, wait, what?!? Grrr >:-| I suppose at least they tried to let me down easy. I’m glad they still value me as a customer…

So while I’m thinking about what it is that just happened, literally not long enough for me to consider what I might do (nothing really) M-Go figured out pretty quickly that they messed up not once, but twice and took responsibility for what it was that just transpired over the last few emails they sent…

Ahhh, relief at last! Own your mistakes? Yes – Thank you M-Go! You did good here. I can just picture the frantic conversations the people over in the M-Go offices were having when this was happening. They don’t have a phone number that I know of, but I can imagine the email inbox for M-Go Customer Care getting flooded with messages from angry and upset customers. I have no idea how many people got this email, but I am very glad they owned their mistake, took responsibility and tried to make things better. For me personally, they definitely made me feel better. I can accept that people make mistakes. We all do. It’s what you do after that shows me more about who you are than not doing anything at all.

Of course we try to do what we can to minimize our mistakes and our errors but stuff happens and things slip through the cracks. Depending on what it is that you do for work, some mistakes can be fatal and there will be consequences. In M-Go’s case, they probably lost a few customers, yes, but they also gained a few more loyal customers merely by owning their mistake. Way to M-Go. Thanks for making us feel human.

On a side note, what do you think about the title of their head customer focused employee – head of “customer care”? Does it make a difference if this person is customer “care” vs. customer “service”? What do you think? Leave a note in the comments below.

Go Forth!