Social media is a valuable customer contact medium. There are over 3.8 billion people using social media, and it’s useful for sending out notifications, answering customer questions, and more. An experienced social media team can even help your company manage a recall, something outlined by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Recall management is a complicated process, and notifying the public is one key part of that. It’s not easy – look at the 35 million covid-19 stimulus checks still not issued over four months after the CARES Act was signed. Now imagine overseeing food recall management and needing to figure out how to get all your beef or lettuce back.
Would you have a better chance than the Internal Revenue Service of reaching everybody affected?
This article will discuss the role social media plays in the recall process and how businesses can effectively leverage it. Let’s start by explaining how organizations leverage social media in the 2020s.
The Role of Social Media
Social media is a way of life, and there’s on end to the platforms you can reach customers on. Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, SnapChat, TikTok, and others each have tens to hundreds of millions (or even billions) of users. This makes them powerful places to reach large crowds of people, and marketing dollars soon poured into each of them, giving them power that surpasses traditional media.
When a case goes to court, both parties must be notified of any actions regarding it. This means the courts typically only allow communication in a few ways, such as in-person, via certified mail (signature required), and service by publication in a general circulation newspaper. It’s considered a viable way to spread information. The New York Times is one of the largest newspapers in the world, reaching a total of five million subscribers each month between its digital and print editions.
For comparison, Samsung reaches nearly 160 million of Facebook’s 2.6 billion monthly active users versus just over 17 million following The New York Times. That the brand and publication are both competing on the platform and neither combined reaches even one percent of the total userbase should properly illustrate just to you how widespread and ubiquitous social media has become. It certainly drew the attention of brands across the globe, as both users and brands compete for attention on each other’s timelines.
Social media platforms became the place for food businesses to offer coupons and deals, spread brand information, gauge event/product interest, and more. They’re also places for consumers to discuss personal brand experiences in forums. Good or bad, we saw a lot of customer stories go viral over the years and create long-term impacts on the brand. Wendy’s Twitter account, for example, follows the brand’s long-running “where’s the beef?” slogan by beefing with popular celebrities and branded accounts.
So how can social media be leveraged during a recall?
Using Social Media for Your Recall
As mentioned above, a product recall has a lot of steps involved, and notifying customers is just one part of the process. This means sharing a post across all platforms with all the relevant information about the product, hazard, and remedy. You may not have Samsung’s reach (or even that of the New York Times) but you’ll reach a portion of your most passionate customers. Even if you only have 1000 followers on each platform, it’s still much cheaper to create one post across them all than the cost of sending postcards, making phone calls, and going door-to-door.
This post can even be featured or pinned to the top of your account, and social media networks have powerful targeted marketing features. This means a sponsored post can be created to specifically target customers based on your own data, along with people visiting specified sites or with particular interests, geographic location, and more. It’s one of the most efficient ways to reach your customer base and provide them with:
1. Recall Information
Provide photos and all relevant information regarding the potential hazard. If the product is to be returned, repaired, or destroyed, make that clear immediately in the post, and provide a website link for more detailed information. Consider creating any relevant hashtags or video tutorial content that can make it easier to identify or correct the involved products.
2. Product Information
Also be sure you’re transparent about the product and make any efforts to repair your branding. This means covering all related aspects of the recall and any repairs or replacements that will be made. In the case of food recall management, you’ll want to explain what was contaminated, the nature of the problem, and how your company corrected it.
From a consumer standpoint, you’re often dealing with a low-priced item where profits are generated more by return business. A replacement on a can of corn, for example, pales in comparison to a lifetime supply of corn for generations of a family. If you want to protect your business from the negative impacts of a product recall, contact Trievr Recall Management to learn more about our scalable SaaS recall solution.