Customer Satisfaction and Reputation Management

On Aug 26, 2010, Toyota announced two recalls affecting Corollas and Matrixes, one for engine stalling problems and one for the power brake issues. Customers are already outraged at the plans to deal with the power brake recall. These new recalls are negatively affecting Toyota’s Quality Reputation.

Toyota has issued a new recall on July 29, 2010 for its Avalon and Lexus LX 470 brands. The Avalon recall is for the 400,000 Avalons from the 2000 – 2004 models in the US, Canada, China and Saudi Arabia. The recall is designed to repair a problems with flawed steering locks. The Lexus LX 470 recall is for 80,000 LX 470s (also known as Land Cruiser 100s outside the US) from the 2003 – 2007 model years. This recall is related to steering shaft disengagement. This recall tarnishes Toyota’s reputation in a new way.

BP’s Oil spill has put it in the spot light, mostly with negative publicity. BP has attempted to fight back with improved communications on the $20 Billion fund, a new leader and Gulf Coast Restoration organization, clean ups and preparations for hurricanes. It has prepared 4 videos on these subjects but then make them hard to find except on the BP site. Small changes in the company website to improve search engine optimization would help BP’s reputation management cause.

BP CEO Tony Hayward BP CEO is no longer speaking for BP’s Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico according to a New York Time article. The BP Board of Directors has removed him because he ‘upset people’. The Chairman of BP’s Board of Directors, Carl-Henric Svanberg is taking over. “This has now turned into a reputational matter, a financial squeeze for BP and a political matter, and that is why you will now see more of me,” said Svanberg. This post cover 4 mistakes Tony made.

BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is in the news regularly, with efforts to control the flow of oil from the well and clean up the mess. It goes without saying that anyone affected by the current BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will be very concerned. The environment and eco system are endangered. Tourism in the affected areas are suffering as tourists cancel their plans to visit affected beach areas. Even if the oil doesn’t show up on shore, the smell of the oil may carry for miles. A group of Grannies in Florida wrote a song on Youtube complaining about Halliburton and BP which may very well go viral. At the time of writing, almost 16,000 people had seen the video. Video comments take very strong positive and negative views of deep sea oil drilling, the Grannies themselves and about BP and Halliburton.

Another blow to the sagging reputation management efforts of Toyota is the latest recall of the Lexus LS Sedans for steering problems. The models affected are the 2010 LS 460, LS 460 L, LS 600h, and the LS 600h and represent about 11,000 cars worldwide. The Lexus ls 600 costs over $100,000 US! The problem seems to be both hardware and software. This latest recall is a further setback to Toyota’s attempts to improve its reputation and customer satisfaction.

Toyota’s Reputation Management efforts took another hit with a new investigation by the US Government National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration. It appears Toyota stalled on a recall concerning a Steering Defect for Toyota pickups, T100s, and 4Runner SUVs built between 1989 and 1998. The steering problem had been identified in 2004 and recalls were done in Japan but failed to alert the US authorities for as much as a year. Some positive news for Toyota includes improved sales and profits and the removal of Consumer’s Reports ‘Don’t Buy’ Designation from its 2010 Lexus GX 460 SUV after electronic stability issues were resolved with a software fix.

Reputation Management firms are often SEO (Search Engine Optimization) specialists who move negative comments off the front page of search engines. Some of the techniques include, raising the rank of the sites below the negative entry by adding favorable comments, using social bookmarking such as Digg, Delicious and others. Creating new subdomain sites on your site also may add more positive entries to the front page of Google. It is far better to over deliver and under promise to prevent the need to use reputation management SEO techniques.

Six topics dominated the feedback from a reader survey on the Customer Satisfaction and Reputation Management blog. Tied for first place were “Customer Satisfaction Strategy and Implementation” and “Best Practices from Other Organizations’. Read the full list in this article.

On Tuesday April 13, 2010, Toyota suspended the sales of the GX 460 Lexus after a report from Consumer’s reports called the SUV a safety risk. Another report shows that Toyota routinely engaged in questionable, evasive and deceptive legal tactics when it was sued. One has to wonder what else is being hidden. Toyota is spending millions on advertising and discounts trying to revive its reputation. But these latest new releases are a severe blow to that effort.