Tips for a Successful Product Retail – Surviving This Public Relations Nightmare

Oct 23

It’s the worst nightmare of a company – one of their products is found to be faulty in a dangerous or even deadly way. One small mistake in the factory can lead to food products that make people sick, machinery with hazardous glitches, and other products that can endanger the life and limb of your customers. When a product recall needs to be done it can be a very tricky situation. How can your company admit the mistake, recall the products and reassure panicked customers during this crisis?

Here are some helpful tips that you can keep in mind that will help you to make your product recall go more smoothly:

Have a Plan in Advance

You don’t have to wait for a product recall to happen in order to figure out how best to deal with it. Assume that the worst will happen and have a plan in advance for responding to this type of crisis. Make a complex plan that describes what decisions you will make, who will have to be involved and what steps you will need to take to rectify the matter.

Act Quickly

When there is a problem with your products that could potentially cause an issue for your customers, it is very important to deal with it as quickly as possible. If you don’t act soon enough, people will see this as neglecting your customers and not caring for their needs.

Many companies hesitate to act because of the large expense of a product recall. Yes, recalling a product is expensive but if you do not take this action, the expenses to your reputation can be much pricier.

Ask the Professionals for Help

It can be very advantageous to hire a field marketing company to help you through the nitty-gritty of the product recall. They are experts in the fine details of product recalls and they will be able to help you handle the issue so that you can emerge with your reputation intact. The cost of hiring this type of help can really be worth it, as your reputation is everything and a product recall can potentially be so destructive.

Spread the Word

When a product needs to be recalled it is important to ensure that you spread the word as far and wide as possible, so everyone will know. This includes consumers, the media, and employees. Use all of the resources that are available to you to announce the recall, including email, television, phone calls, and much more. Email, for example, could be a rapid and convenient method to communicate with a large audience instantaneously. All you would have to do is utilize an email management software like Simplelists (find more information about this at https://www.simplelists.com/), which can help in sending emails in bulk to your mailing list.

Likewise, social media platforms could be of help here. Social media platforms like TikTok which has a huge user base can also help you spread the message faster than most mediums. Of course, you should have a TikTok account with a good number of followers. You can buy real followers to improve engagement and sites like TokUpgrade can help you learn more about the same.

Communicate Internally

Every employee and representative for your company will be public relations representatives and crisis managers for your brand, so make sure that they are well informed on the issue so that they can talk to the public if needed. You don’t want them to be spreading the wrong message about the recall and misinforming your customers!

Don’t Play the Blame Game

When something goes wrong it is tempting to focus on who is to blame, but this is not the time or place. Maybe it is your fault, maybe it isn’t, but it is certainly your responsibility to ensure the safety of your customers. Do the responsible thing and deal with the product recall as soon as possible, then figure out who is to blame later when all of your customers are out of harm’s way.

Figure Out What Happened

There is no point going through the painful process of recalling a product if you don’t fix the problem and another product comes out faulty. Make sure that you look very closely at your manufacturing standards so that you can figure out why the issue happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

A product recall can be a terrible situation for your brand, but there are ways that you can deal with it and recover in a positive way. When you follow these tips you will be able to handle a product recall in the best way possible, which will increase your chance of emerging with your company reputation and your customer base intact. Don’t underestimate the advantage of hiring a product recall company to help you deal with this issue. They are experts in recalling products successfully and they can help you to navigate a potential public relations nightmare and come out the other side with optimism for the future.