By Claire Ayles
There’s nothing like a product recall to send a PR into a tailspin, so well done to Dell which - faced with recalling 4.1m laptop batteries before they spontaneously combust - has managed its latest crisis according to the best practice textbook. No fuss, no denials, lots of information, plus quick and decisive action, means that Dell has made the best of a very bad situation.
But even when a company manages its crisis as well as Dell, can its reputation ever recover from this amount of negative media coverage? Well, let me tell you a story...
In 2001, I was one of the first people to buy a new BMW Mini Cooper. I loved it. However, our relationship soon soured when it had to be recalled because there was a problem with the paintwork catching fire when it got near petrol - something of a fatal flaw for a car. This was promptly communicated to me both directly and through the press - but as a consumer, I still felt pretty inconvenienced.
Four months later, and despite another well-communicated product recall (this time the CD player wouldn’t turn off, so my battery was always flat), I was ready for a divorce.
BMW eventually sorted everything out and my car served me well enough for another three years, but I never felt the same about it again. And worse for BMW, I simply couldn’t recommend a Mini to anyone else.
However, while I was having a row with the customer services division, BMW’s PR machine was beavering away, turning Mini into a highly desirable brand. As a result, for every disillusioned Mini buyer such as myself, there are still thousands of people who want one. And when you look at the revenues BMW is generating from Mini sales, you have to conclude that it has more than weathered the storm of those early product recalls.
Dell may be a big brand, but when push comes to shove, it sells cheap grey laptops, just like numerous other companies. And while we’ve seen that Dell is pretty good at handling the logistics of a major product recall, its challenge now is to ‘do a BMW’ ie. not only convince us that there is no risk associated with buying its products, but that it also offers something more desirable than the competition.
Either that, or it could provide a free smoke alarm with each new laptop.
Certainly its easier to avoid the crisis rather than recover. Check out this article about what they "should" have done regarding this battery crisis - http://www.levick.com/resources/topics/articles/dell_battery_crisis.php
BTW - I'm sure those photos of the laptop in flames are painful for Dell's PR team!
Posted by: JP | 28 August 2006 at 21:36