I love it when business articles mention “unsealed documents” right off the bat. You just know that you’re about to read some juicy details. Such was the case in this New York Times article about the lengths to which Dell went between 2003 and 2005 to handle computer failures caused by faulty capacitors.
Part of the company’s “strategy” of dealing with the problem was to suggest that employees not “bring this to customer’s attention proactively” and instead should “emphasize uncertainty.” (The Times article has a link to a confidential Dell slide deck that gave employees ways to handle the range of customer questions and accusations that they no doubt encountered daily.)
Besides being a bad business practice, what must it do to the poor employees, who have to lie and dissemble their way through phone call after phone call with angry customers? I realize when a company heads down a road like this, the last thing on its collective mind is, “How will this affect our workers?” But among the many collateral forms of damage (bad PR, erosion of consumer trust, etc.), you may also chase away some of the very types of honest, dedicated people you will need to work on the front lines to get you out of the mess you’ve made.
I also realize Dell isn’t alone in this. Other companies likely force their people to cover the corporate rear end on a daily basis – or worse, like Verizon, actively engage them in profiting from questionable business practices. I’m just continually surprised that so many seemingly savvy marketers keep making these same mistakes.