The Problem with Inconvenience

Here’s our original sentence that we pulled from our email.

I apologize for that inconvenience.

Last time, we looked at how apologies don’t count. This time, I’m focused on that last part.

Comfort

Convenience is all about comfort.  No hassles, no stress, just being comfortable with something.  When it comes to feature requests, there’s nothing to do with comfort.  If you don’t have it, I’m not more uncomfortable than I was before hand.  If you do had it, I might be more comfortable but that’s a stretch.

Out of place

Inconvenience is a lot like the word “apologize”.  You see it all over the place when it comes to customer support and service.  But outside of that, it’s out of place.

It doesn’t show up in conversation in any way.  Have you ever walked up to someone and sad “I’m sorry for the inconvenience of me being late”?

Write like you talk

With support emails, you should be writing like you talk.  Have a fluid, normal conversation, just via email.  You wouldn’t use a phrase like “I apologize for the inconvenience” when talking with a friend so don’t use it with a customer.

Instead, try something like “I’m sorry we don’t have that!”.  It’s a lot more authentic and human – not something written by the corporate robot lawyer.