How To Screw Up Customer Care

I got an eyeful earlier this week when I stumbled upon (literally!) Courtney Tuttle’s blog and read the Kathy Milette piece reprinted by Tuttle on January 5, 2008, about her experience with Kia. Needless to say, she is the unhappy owner of a Kia Sedona, a crappy minivan marketed by that Korean automaker.

The Kia Sedona Falls Short of the Pack

I say crappy because the Sedona just doesn’t live up to expectations and has many flaws which Milette has discovered. The Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna are the cream of the class when it comes to minivans while the Chrysler Town & Country and its Dodge Grand Caravan sibling are the bestsellers. Compared to each of these models the Kia falls short. I digress.

Hatfied Kia, the Dealership in Question

Without going into specifics about the Sedona’s troubles, Milette aired her grievance through the social media spectrum when her many letters and related efforts were not handled to her satisfaction by her dealership which was in this case Hatfield Kia in Columbus, OH.  It was the dealership’s responses (or lack thereof) which encouraged Milette to try a different tactic.

Going the Social Media Route

Reading the article on Tuttle’s blog, you quickly learn that there are plenty of ways to air customer grievances with the internet being an important part of this. For one, Milette started a Google Page to give air to her dissatisfaction and made several updates to her The Web Foot Journey blog to track progress.  Of course, repeating the term “Kia” over and over again is an attention getter, something that the search engines are prone to notice (think: keyword strategy).

I won’t rehash all that I read as that isn’t the point of this article. Instead, I want to say this: if you are a business who values customer satisfaction, then you must face the music and realize that when a customer is unhappy, they’ll often go to extraordinary lengths to let others know about it.

Finally, Kia Relents

In Milette’s case her strategy is paying off and it looks like Kia is finally responding. Although Milette hasn’t removed her previous negative (but true) posts Kia seems to be responding in a positive way.

Too bad it took Kia so long to respond because now when someone does a word search for Kia Sedona, they’ll find these and other articles about the van. I know that when I come across a steady drumbeat of negative product information, I quickly move on. You have to wonder if Kia could have saved itself a lot of grief (and money) by taking action sooner.