Should You Send a Virus Apology to Customers?

Should you apologize if your business computers/network get an e-mail virus (zombie computers) that start sending out e-mails to all your clients?

First, you want to figure out how that was allowed to happen in the first place so it does not happen again. Lack of IT staff or knowledge, employee training, software, updates? Find out the source and put proper practices and policies in place so you can be confident this won’t happen again.

Then, you may want to send out a simple e-mail apology humbly stating you are sorry for any inconvenience caused and noting the proper practices are now in place to prevent this from happening again. You may want to use a service such as Vertical Response that ensures clean mails and delivery, that also allows you to customize your e-mails to address each contact by their first name. This serves to make your broadcast more personal and sincere.

Keep in mind however, that if your customers have good virus protection, your lack of previous attention to security may not be an issue and they may not even notice because the infected e-mail will be quarantined on the download. See, the only people who have problems with viruses are those who don’t make the effort to protect their own computers — which includes constantly updating your virus software.

What if only your business laptop or office computer gets a virus and sends out to everyone in your address book? It’s called grovel! At this point in time there really is no excuse to be that irresponsible. Offer all your contacts your humble apology only after you download some reliable virus protection software so this doesn’t happen again. And, make sure you use the built in update scheduler to ensure that your computer is kept informed of the latest new viruses to know what to protect you from.

If this has happened to you because you are using a freebie e-mail service such as @hotmail or @yahoo, time to step up and use your own dot com for all your business e-mail communications. Not to mention how unprofessional using a freebie service looks for business e-mails, these services get hacked all that time. You do not have control or the ability to prevent future potentially embarrassing situations.

Using your own dot com which is extremely inexpensive also helps to build your brand and Web site awareness while putting you in the driver’s seat to protect your equipment — and image.