Customer Satisfaction and Reputation Management

United Airlines is in the news again. After the fiasco with United Breaks Guitars, a video that went viral on Youtube about a damaged guitar, United lost a passenger’s luggage and even after 6 weeks, refused to refund the $25.00 baggage fee they charged. The passenger filed a small claims complaint in a US court. He also wrote about it in Yahoo Finance.

Toyota’s customer satisfaction woes continue to climb. On April 5, 2010, Toyota US may face a $16.4 Million fine for the delay in announcing the recall of Toyota vehicles over accelerator pedal flaws. The US government claims that Toyota was hiding the defect and was slow to report it. This action will also be a warning to other auto manufacturers and manufacturers in general about the seriousness of dealing with customer satisfaction and safety issues.

Customer Satisfaction processes call for addressing issues with customers squarely and fairly. So far, Toyota has not done this well. Embarrassing evidence keeps surfacing and public relations efforts have limited success. Lawmakers blast Toyota Chief despite his apology.Toyota caught bragging about savings from limiting recalls.Toyota is forced to provide US recall customers with additional services. Allegations surface that Toyota withheld key data in Crash Lawsuits. Toyota Crisis may clear a man jailed in fatal crash. Toyota apologizes in China. In Nigeria, Toyota blames accelerator pedal problem on the cold. Whoever is managing Toyota’s customer satisfaction and customer relations appears to be failing.

A Forbes article about a dissatisfied customer with a million followers on Twitter that forced an organization to change their customer satisfaction policies is a poster child for why customer service personnel need social media sensitivity training and management needs to adapt to the new age of marketing and public relations.

The bad news continues for Toyota’s brands. Prius, Lexus, Sai, Camry and Tacoma recalls have been issued in the past week. And there is investigation going on about possible problems with the steering on newer Toyota Corollas. Customer Satisfaction with Toyota has certainly been impacted with this widespread quality problems. Some Toyota units in the US were named in a Racketeering lawsuit. Toyota shareholders have also seen a big drop (about 20%) in their share value since mid January when the most recent recalls started.

An unbelievable scenario is percolating between Toronto, Canada transit riders and the Toronto Transit Commission workers resulting in a social media battle between riders and unionized workers. Add in a sex scandal by the chairman of the Toronto Transit Commission and you have the makings of a customer satisfaction twitstorm.

Toyota’s customer satisfaction plans are not going well. The consumer expects Toyota to care about their safety and notify them of potential problems and fixes. They also expect swift action on issues, with a strong action plan to fix and some indication of how Toyota will ensure this kinds of problems will not recur in the future. Toyota is bungling these actions. The Toyota Prius and Lexus hybrid models are being added to Toyota’s quality woes with a possible defect in brakes. While Toyota claims to have fixed the problem in the new cars it is manufacturing it has no action plan for current affected Prius owners. Toytoa’s CEO apologizes. Also see the video of customer reactions.

Toyota is working hard to on reputation management, trying to appease customers and restore customer satisfaction and loyalty. Despite this effort multiple law suits and class action suits have been launched against Toyota. There is a perception that the current fix being implemented is not the real solution, that there are lingering problem with the acceleration system (computer, electronic and mechanical), and the lack of a brake-to-idle failsafe, which brings the engine to idle when both the throttle is in the open position and the break pedal is depressed. There is also concern that Toyota failed to exercise its duty of warn’ customers of a defect in a timely manner. Toyota is the middle of a major reputation management nightmare.

A volunteer network is trying to satisfy their customers (those in need in Haiti) by coordinating the movement of water and other supplies around Haiti using Twitter and a relatively new mapping software called Ushahidi, which allows text messages to be mapped by time and location. When buildings are destroyed and street signs are gone, volunteers don’t know where they are or how to get to the place they are supposed to deliver the supplies. Rachelle Houde from Montreal is part of a massive volunteer effort over coming that challenge. Read her story!

In a recent article by Inc titled 30 Tips for using Social Media in Your Business, there were seven were directly related to customer satisfaction processes and techniques.