Page 169 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

of containment of a crisis is to ensure that you aren’t making
decisions that will hamper future improvement kaizen efforts.
The reactions of the dealers and the TMS call center in han-
dling the recalls were essentially built in by Toyota’s efforts over
the years in selecting and training dealers and CSRs, which re-
flected a more general philosophy across the company. This phi-
losophy might best be summed up in three statements: (1) accept
responsibility, (2) don’t blame customers, suppliers, dealers, or
anyone else, and, above all else, (3) put customers first.

Don’t Point Fingers,
Respond to Customer Concerns

Mike Michels, vice president of external communications for
TMS, put it this way: “It’s very easy in the automotive industry to
say [a driver is] not using the product as intended. We bent over
backwards not to blame the driver. Throughout the early stage of
this, there were lots and lots of meetings [asking,] ‘How are we go-
ing to make this painless, and in fact maybe even a positive expe-
rience for our customer?’ That got everybody on the same page.”
Akio Toyoda described his personal philosophy of commu-
nicating during the crisis this way: “I wanted to make people un-
derstand that Toyota is not perfect, [we] admit that sometimes we
make mistakes, we have defects. But once we know there are de-
fects or problems, we stop and everybody joins forces and we try
to fix the problem. And . . . I decided I would never point fingers
at somebody else. . . . We were committed to safety and quality
and would take responsibility for fixing any problems.”
Toyoda’s communications during this time were peppered
with public apologies to customers. In an op-ed published in the
Washington Post, Toyoda wrote, “We have not lived up to the high

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