Product recalls hit small and large businesses alike.
Businesses can learn a lot from past recalls, and this means learning internally and externally.
Learning from Your Own Product Recalls
Businesses can learn from their own recalls. When a recall happens, there’s a lot that goes into the process:
- Understanding where the fault happened
- Forging new procedures and policies to lower the risk of a recall
- Alerting consumers of the recall
Depending on the size of the recall, it can cost businesses millions or billions of dollars. Businesses that have a small-scale recall can learn how to properly manage recalls, how to alert consumers of the recall, understand what faults led to the recall, and ultimately, how to better protect against recalls in the future.
Learning from Other Companies’ Product Recalls
Small and large businesses can learn from the recalls of conglomerates. A lot of recalls have made headlines in recent years, including Honda, Toyota and Blue Bell.
These companies did a lot of good and bad during their recalls.
What can we learn from these past mistakes?
Aggressive Growth is Risky
Toyota is a prime example of aggressive growth being too risky and even unmanageable. Toyota pushed to replace General Motors as the world’s leading auto manufacturer, and this led to:
- Quality decline
- Product recalls
- Recalling more products than it sold
Toyota’s push for growth pushed the limits of the company’s quality control, leading to the company recalling more vehicles in 2005 than it sold. Eventually, the failure to maintain quality control led to large publications no longer recommending Toyota vehicles.
Respond Quickly
Blue Bell found that there was an issue with their product, and the company responded slower than a lot of people had hoped. The company recalled products in March 13, 2015, but the recall was limited.
Positive tests for listeria resulted in the company recalling all of its products a month later.
Recalls need to be swift, and the faster action is taken, the less risk of a brand’s image being tarnished. Toyota wasn’t sure as to why their vehicles started accelerating improperly, but they recalled their vehicles, which at least warned about the potential problem.
Go the Extra Mile
Honda, along with many other manufacturers, have been going through an intense recall related to their airbags. A third-party issue from Takata caused the problem, and Honda and other manufacturers have sent out countless notices to vehicle owners.
Honda is going the extra mile, dispatching a team to knock on affected owners’ doors to have their airbags replaced.
This is going beyond the call of duty, and it shows consumers that the company is willing to go above and beyond their responsibility to ensure that their consumers are safe.
Companies that are willing to go the extra mile for recalls are ones that come out of the recall with their brand untarnished.
