Did you see that security camera footage from late last year where the FedEx delivery guy threw a monitor over a gate? Yeah, well so did almost 9 million others and counting. FedEx faced a PR sh*tstorm when the irate customer put the video footage online; but face it they did.

The company didn’t bury it’s head in the sand. After initiating “action in accord with our disciplinary policy” against the employee in question, they fought back on the same channels where the crisis spread; online and YouTube. In a blog post called absolutely, positively unacceptable, Matthew Thornton, III, senior VP of FedEx Express U.S. Operations, said: “As the leader of our pickup and delivery operations across America, I want you to know that I was upset, embarrassed, and very sorry for our customer’s poor experience. This goes directly against everything we have always taught our people and expect of them.”

A Cautionary Tale

Without a huge amount of charisma, but with undoubted honesty, Thornton goes on to describe how FedEx responded to the customer in question – Face to face meeting and a replacement monitor courtesy of FedEx – and how the video is now used in employee training to make sure this kind of thing never happens again.

Honesty is the best Policy

It’s common these days for online crisis comms to revolve around Machiavellian tactics like URL buying, or even bad photoshopping. But FedEx held up their hands, said sorry, revealed how the issue had been resolved and showed how it was using this episode as a lesson to ensure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. The real lesson to be learned from FedEx is that sometimes a simple apology is best.