Dealing with Disaster

Following on from 37Signals' recent post about dealing with mistakes, Julian Bicknell, CTO of Developer Express Inc recently sent my company an email for a problem with their automated announcements system. It had been spewing out multiple repeat copies of an announcement and was then followed by an apology from Mr Bicknall. Fair enough. But what made it special was the ending ...

I'm sending this as a general email because I wanted to apologize to everyone as quickly as possible. However, by my sending it, I'm not trying to avoid any personalized interaction with you: you can, if you want, complain to me directly rather than to a anonymous email alias. You can reach me at XXX@devexpress.com, or, if you'd rather, on my cell phone at +1 XXX XXX XXXX (I'm on Mountain Time in the US, GMT-7).

(I'm hiding his details as I'm a customer and you're not). It was the mobile number that did it for me.