Reputation and Reliability

As I mentioned in my last post - I am currently working as the marketing and communications manager of a medical company that specialises in the diagnosis of osteoporosis (brittle bone disease). One service we offer is a mobile van which travels to rural towns in WA and x-rays people's bones to see how strong they are. The van was written off recently in a freak accident which is very unfortunate.
Having said that, I was thrilled this morning when my boss advised me that the van is expected to be back on the road in only 6 more weeks! I love the van, running this service is hands-down the BEST part of my job.
Two years ago when I was first hired the van had a shocking reputation. I know this because almost every time I phoned a rural 'contact' I was greated with answers like "oh...right...you. Is your van actually going to show up this time?" and our call centre would receive complaints from rural doctors who "had no idea we were even coming to their town, and what is it you guys do anyway?"
Clearly we had some problems with the way people viewed our van service.
It turns out local doctors often weren't notified the van was coming to their town or they weren't given enough warning and sufficient time to refer their patients to us. Constant visiting cancellations and a serious lack of communication on our end led to a reputation of unreliability. Many doctors and other rural stakeholders (patients, shire councils) didn't trust our company to provide a dependable service in their towns.
So over the last two years I've worked tirelessly (except for on casual Tuesdays, where I tend to work a little less) rebuilding relationships with our rural contacts, and establishing a network of new contacts who can help to support the mobile service. We phone, email, send letters (etc) to keep contacts up to date with the van visits months ahead of schedule and make sure EVERYONE in the database knows exactly what is happening and if there are any changes to our visits.
Although university has taught me a real way of measuring a company's reputation is yet to be developed, there have been a couple of positive outcomes from our efforts. The company now receives phone-calls from towns we haven't visited in the past who request visits with our van from simply 'hearing about the service.' Our records also indicate an increase in van bookings by over 50% from early 2009 onwards. My boss is pretty happy.
However, I was highly concerned the van's crash might bring our company's reliability factor back to square one. The owner of the company asked me to somewhat downplay the situation and tell rural doctors we would be back on the road 'very soon' (a lot sooner then we actually would be). He believed it would make us seem more reliable if we were expected to be back on the road quickly. I felt this message would have the opposite effect. We would simply be cancelling all the intial visits and then cancelling again later on.
This situation has taught me it can actually be really hard to straight out disagree with management. It is particularly hard when the topic is one of reputation; the importance of which can be downplayed and somewhat impossible to measure.
Keeping this is mind we are often told at university of the importance of being honest and open as PR practitioners. After a lot of discussion (and butting-heads) it was decided we would have to be upfront about the time-line and just continually keep our contacts up to date on a regular basis.
Unsuprisingly the majority of contacts we have were really understanding about the situation.
I guess only time will tell whether or not the crash has had an impact on the our van's perceived reliability... but I'm looking forward to contacting everyone and letting them know we'll be up and running again in 6 weeks!

Kindest regards :)
Ashleigh Coyle

Marketing, Communications Manager and Passionate Supporter of Rural Services!