What to Do in a Product Safety Crisis

If your company faces a product safety crisis, don't panic. Here are some guidelines to help you respond with a cool head

By Eric Dezenhall

If "reality television" has exposed the personal lives of ordinary people, then speed-of-light electronic communications have stripped bare the most intimate vulnerabilities that companies face when managing product safety concerns.

Between 2006 and 2008, there were more than:

• 1,100 separate recalls of consumer products such as appliances, clothing, and children's goods, accounting for more than 1.5 billion individual items; and

• 130 recalls of meat, poultry, and egg products affecting roughly 56 million pounds of product.

These figures don't even include drugs or automobiles, which have been notable for recalls, or cosmetics. Product recalls are now everyday events—not necessarily crises—yet we are aware of only the few that are highly publicized.

Product safety advice is fraught with Mother Goose clichés, such as "Get the facts out immediately" and "Do a mea culpa." And simplistic business-school case studies have no relevance to what your company may face, typically dwelling on the over-cited Tylenol tampering crisis. What follows are some guidelines for a level-headed response:

1. Identify the true origin of the crisis.
Before you can find a cure, you need the right diagnosis. What is really driving the controversy: a legitimate hazard or an unwarranted attack by a motivated party?

As a general rule, when your company bears some responsibility, repent; if not, go on the offense.

When melamine-tainted pet food sickened and killed pets in 2007, Procter & Gamble Pet Care played a critical role in identifying the culprit substance in products manufactured by one of their vendors. P&G' s Consumer Relations Unit, trained to handle inquiries from passionate pet owners, quickly and effectively sifted through inquiries and relayed pertinent information to internal scientific sleuths, who investigated the claims. This fast-moving process led to a well-organized recall and the implementation of new safeguards.

When a human finger turned up in a cup of Wendy's chili in 2005, pundits said the company needed to conduct a nationwide recall. But why, when there was nothing wrong with the chili? Wendy's managers knew they weren't confronting a systemic problem with misplaced fingers. Rather, they were confronting a saboteur. The matter was resolved not with a recall, but with the arrest of the criminal who put the severed digit in the chili.

2. Isolate the risk.
In safety-driven crises, customers want answers to two questions: "Am I going to be okay?" and What are you doing about it?"

Bolstering consumer confidence is largely about control, and companies must communicate precisely what consumers should—and shouldn't —be looking out for. One reason the public can identify so few product recalls is because savvy companies defused potential outrage by quickly flagging offending products—serial or lot numbers, purchase and expiration dates, regions and stores where the product was sold.

Give consumers a straightforward action, such as returning the product to the store where they bought it. A consumer should be able to conclude, "Because I did not purchase or use Acme Brand Contact Lens Solution, Lot #1234, between Mar. 1 and Mar. 15, 2009, I am probably not at risk" or "I purchased Acme Brand Contact Lens Solution, Lot #1234, and I will take it back to my nearest Main Street Food Store for a refund coupon."

3. Don't offer definitive assurances until you've isolated the risk.
It is too often the instinct of many executives to offer assurances that all is well before the critical facts are known. The reason why companies don't always "get the facts out right away," as they are so often urged to do by the press, is because they don't know the facts right away. This can result in debacles such as when the Postmaster General held a news conference during the 2001 anthrax attacks to assure the public that the Washington, D.C. mail supply was safe—only to have two postal workers die of anthrax poisoning days later.