- Hi and welcome to this week's Recall Q&A.
I'm Steve Hather, director of the Recall Institute
and this week I'm looking
at product recall procedures and plans.
In this video and those videos that follow in this series,
I'm going to go over what an effective product recall
procedure or plan should include.
The first thing to note about a product recall procedure
is to be very clear
on the objectives of your product recall.
What are you trying to achieve?
I see dozens of product recall plans every year
and the first thing I notice
is that they often start with an objective
like "to retrieve unsafe product from the market".
While retrieval is one method used in a recall,
it is not the only method.
Retrieval is actually a tactic, not an objective.
So, what do I mean by that?
A lot of companies get fixated on retrieval rate
as a key measure of success.
However, we know that retrieval rates
are very low for many products,
particularly lower cost, short shelf life items.
If we know that retrieval rates are going to be low,
does that mean the recall is ineffective?
Well, not necessarily.
The primary objective of a product recall
is firstly to manage consumer safety risk.
By definition, at least as it's defined
in the international standard,
a product recall is corrective action taken
after production to address a consumer safety issue.
Corrective action could include retrieving the product
from the market but it could mean repairing the item
or asking consumers to take it to a repair center.
It could mean providing additional warnings
or instructions on use.
It could mean making sure consumers are made aware
of the risk and understand how to reduce it.
A key part of a product recall is therefore communication.
If you're going to measure how effective
a product recall is,
you need to measure the effectiveness
of your communications.
Now, I'll create another video on recall communications
as I don't really have time to cover it here
in enough depth.
The point is that if your objective is retrieval rate alone,
you may not be thinking broadly enough
about managing consumer safety risk.
The second objective of a product recall
is to provide a solid platform to restore the business.
When you have an incident or need to conduct
a product recall,
there will be a question mark about your product
and your brand in the minds of consumers
or if you're a B2B company,
your customers such as other manufacturers or retailers.
Customers and consumers are not naive or stupid.
They realize that from time to time
any company can make a mistake
regardless of how good your systems and processes are.
How you manage that mistake,
regardless of whether it was technically your mistake
or a supplier's mistake
will determine how quickly and how completely
their trust in you will be restored
and therefore whether they will continue
to buy from you.
In other words, managing you reputation
is going to be critical in a product recall.
If you have the objective
of building a solid platform
for restoring your business after the incident
or recall is over,
you'll broaden your focus
in deciding what actions to take
and how you build and maintain key relationships
when you're planning your recall.
Incidents in product recalls are potential crises,
whether they become a crisis
will largely depend on how you manage them.
In the following parts of this series,
I'll go through each of the steps
of an effective product recall procedure
so you can start to build a plan
to manage incidents and product recalls more effectively.
Now, if you can't wait for the next videos
in the series, feel free to jump ahead
by clicking on the link below
to get our free guide,
The 10 Key Elements of Crisis Prevention
or type 10 Key Elements in the comments section,
I'll be happy to forward that to you.
If you have any questions you would like answered,
please leave a comment below
and don't forget, subscribe to our YouTube channel
to get notified when new videos are posted.
Thanks very much and I look forward
to seeing you in part two.