How Not To Handle A Crisis, Pt 2
Welcome back! Nice to see you!
So last time, we talked about what went wrong during the pet food recalls, and how things really could have gone better. In this entry, I want to talk about what we, as independent retailers, can do when a crisis happens.
I’d love to say this was all my idea, but it wasn’t. I got my first clue right upside the head from an angry customer. She’d called the store and wanted to talk to me — here’s what she had to say:
“How come,” she demanded, “You can call me each and every time Iams goes on sale, but you don’t give me one call to let me know that the food I’ve been giving my dogs is safe or not?”
“Because,” I had to tell her, “I’m a knucklehead! And the minute I get off of the phone, I’m going to start doing exactly that!”
That’s the beauty of database marketing and making full use of your POS system. With our Club Dave program, we keep track of what our customers buy. We have all of their contact information. It’s a natural way to respond to a crisis: get out in front of the problem and be proactive. If your customers are affected, call them and let them know! If they’re safe, call and let them know that too.
Yes, you are going to spend a gazillion hours on the phone. We wore out our phone lines during the recall! But it was well worth it, because we care about our customers and their dogs, and we wanted them to know if they were safe or not.
This can work for any retailer, in any industry. It’s critical that we keep track of our customers and their buying habits for any number of reasons, but none of those reasons are as important as being able to communicate with the customer in a time of crisis. This is how we earn the trust and loyalty of our customers!
As an added note, make a point to keep all of your employees informed about what’s going on! There’s a reason for this. Your employees don’t magically disappear when they’re not at work! They go home, they go out, they shop in the community, they pick up their kids from school — and your customers see them. There’s a better than small chance that your customers will approach your employees for the ‘inside scoop’ about the situation. If your employees are clueless about what’s going on, you’re going to have a difficult time convincing the customer that you can be trusted!
Finally, now that a year has elapsed, it’s clear that Iams, Nutro, and the other companies that were invovled in the pet food recall have lost customers. You’d think they’d reach out to these customers, see why they’ve left, and how they could recapture that business. But they haven’t — probably because a tiny little company like Proctor and Gamble simply doesn’t have any money for marketing.
But as independent retailers, we do — and we have to!
Tags: database marketing, independent retailing, marketing, pet food, pet food recall, POS system
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