Bridgestone/Firestone – Tire Recall Program

The Faneuil Group has been working with Bridgestone/Firestone on an outbound customer satisfaction program since 1991 and an inbound consumer affairs program since 1993. As a rule, Bridgestone/Firestone succeeds or fails based on their customers' willingness to conduct repeat business. Unresolved or poorly resolved customer issues are a serious business threat to the company. For this reason, they chose The Faneuil Group as a customer service partner with the capability to assist in identifying and resolving service problems before those problems resulted in lost customers.

The outbound customer satisfaction program focuses on superior customer service and satisfaction. Through phone surveying, The Faneuil Group provides Bridgestone/Firestone with a quarterly sample of customers from each of over 1,500 corporate retail locations. This data enables Bridgestone/Firestone management to uncover service issues before they result in lost customers.

The inbound consumer affairs program was designed for quick resolution of customer complaints and questions. The agents follow a hierarchical procedure in resolving each customer's issue. Bridgestone/Firestone gives The Faneuil Group the discretion to resolve disputes of up to a certain dollar amount immediately. At the next level, the representative can conference the store manager in on the call for problem resolution. Finally, the representative can refer the problem to a district manager or even Bridgestone/Firestone’s corporate level for resolution.

 The Faneuil Group Solution

In 2000, Bridgestone/Firestone, in full cooperation with a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration probe of tire safety, announced that it was recalling all Firestone Radial ATX and Radial ATX II tires in size P235/75R15 produced in North America, and Wilderness AT tires in size P235/75R15 produced at its Decatur, Illinois plant. Bridgestone/Firestone estimated the recall would involve more than 6.5 million tires.

Based on this estimation, Bridgestone/Firestone was faced with a massive customer relations challenge - the largest consumer product recall since the Tylenol case of 1982. To help them tackle it, Bridgestone/Firestone turned to its strategic partner of over seven years, The Faneuil Group. By the time of the official announcement, inbound email volume to the consumer affairs representatives at The Faneuil Group had spiked from an average of 50 per day to more than 3,000 per day, and daily call volumes spiked from approximately 240 to over 70,000.

A Cisco customer contact solution was already in place to handle email volume when The Faneuil Group tackled the massive tire recall response. As email volumes increased 60-fold, the representatives' first task prior to the official announcement of the recall was to notify customers that average response time would be extended to three days from the normal two days. On the date of the official recall, an official recall announcement and an email response template with complete information about the recall were both released to the public.

In the first six weeks following the recall, the consumer affairs mailbox at The Faneuil Group received almost 43,000 e-mails. By the middle of the following month, volumes began to level off to approximately 700 incoming emails per day. Bridgestone/Firestone was reassured by the fact that the recall was being handled as efficiently as possible, due to the existing technology and quick response of The Faneuil Group. In the following months, representatives continued to scan every e-mail with the goal of ensuring that each was answered to the customer's satisfaction.