What to do when you don't get it right the first time

So this blog post today was originally going to be about the importance of goal setting, but the whole Toyota recall thing has reminded me of something else I wanted to talk about a couple months back. For some people what I'm going to say is going to be pretty obvious, but for others, perhaps not so much.

Toyota effed up in a big, grand, failblog sort of way. To develop a brand as shiny as theirs with solid vehicles such as the best selling Corolla and Camry, takes years of work and millions of dollars. It starts with engineering a reliable product priced to provide value, and marketed to communicate value. After a decade or so of providing value, then your product might, just might become a hallmark of excellence, an international best selling vehicle, and a perennial Top 10 on Consumer lists. That sort of capital takes time and money, and it can all be whisked away in just a couple weeks time. Toyota would likely be lucky if this doesn't cost the literally billions in lost sales.

The simple fact of the matter is that mistakes cannot be avoided, but its important to realize that there is a certain way of dealing with them. To walk away with even a modicum of grace from a negative situation, as a business owner or service provider you need to understand that its not the event that defines you or your business, its your reaction to that event.

A couple months ago I was shopping for a new bicycle and I was allowing myself a pretty generous budget. Looking for a specific brand I went to one of Calgary's major bicycle retailers, but not the one where they know me by name. I made the pretty long detour to the shop and decided on the bike that was right for me. I'm an educated consumer so I actually knew exactly what I wanted, but I wanted to test the service and play dumb (if I'm going to drop a couple grand on a bike I at least want to know I'm buying it from a nice guy). Well I was flat out ignored for about half an hour while I stood beside the bike that I wanted. There were sales people in the area and one helping another customer but I received no acknowldgement, no eye contact, and no offers for help or indications that they'd call more staff to assist me.

I've worked retail and I know when you're short staffed, or super busy, customer service is tough. But thats just not a good example of how to manage the B2C relationships, or any relationships for that matter. So rather than tell everyone about my negative experience I actually took the time to email the customer service manager. First thing the next day I got an email from him saying that he could make excuses, but that wouldn't change the fact that they didn't come through. He offered me a proposal on how to improve my experience with the retailer and more importantly he offered me an apology. I ended up buying the bike at cost and of course I'm happy with how things ended but still can't help but have that bad taste in my mouth from the first experience.

When the boom happened here in Calgary two or three years ago and retailers were placed at the will of employees who were in high demand and spoiled rotten, the quality of customer service in this city tanked. A lot of mistakes were made every day and some people couldn't be bothered to care. For you, if that situation ever comes along, whether you are the manager of 2 employees or two thousand, the willingness to apologize and admit the customer was wronged and committing to a mutually agreeable solution will often turn a negative experience into a positive opportunity.

I honestly have no idea of how long it will take for Toyota's image to recover, its probably too soon to even measure what they're doing to correct the situation. When quality and reliability is the core competency that you use to stalk the big three in sales for decades, the big three being able to turn around provide trade-in incentives on the premise that their accelerator pedals don't suck, really hurts the team. The recall has to be just the beginning because with that they're only fixing their cars, not their image. Their best bet? Fix the cars, admit they screwed up rather than blaming the supplier, and then promise that this was an opportunity forcing them to be better than they were when they were at their best.