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In our society, where social media has become so ubiquitous and its users don’t hesitate to post their negative opinions about a business or brand, any company is vulnerable to a crisis. If you fail to set up a plan for your response, you’re setting yourself up for disaster.
This week on my podcast, I spoke with Crisis Ready: Building an INVINCIBLE Brand in an Uncertain World author Melissa Agnes about the following steps to fortify your company’s reputation through crisis preparedness.
Define What A Crisis Involves
It may seem obvious and intuitive to know when you’re dealing with a crisis, but in reality, you’re likely to run into a grey area. For instance, perhaps a tense interaction between a customer and one of your reps goes viral. For some businesses, this could be a massive problem, while for others, it’s not actually a huge deal. Either way, you want to define what a “crisis” means for your team in advance so that you don’t overreact or underreact in the heat of the moment.
Part of this analysis requires you to develop a true understanding of how much your company’s success relies on reputation. If being well-liked by most people is crucial for your business, an embarrassing event that’s minor for another firm might be life-changing for yours. The main thing you need to consider is whether a specific incident could likely have a long-term negative impact on your business. If so, then it’s a crisis.
Consider Your Timing
In general, you should respond to a crisis through direct communication with your customers between 15 to 60 minutes after the incident. If you respond within that time window, “you’re getting ahead of the story, you’re taking control of the narrative, and you’re showing the people who matter most to your business that you care about them and the incident; and that you’re going to be dedicated to keeping them informed; and they don’t have to go to a third party that isn’t you for that information,” Agnes explained.
Although it’s important to balance the speed and quality of your response, your primary focus should be on transparent communication. You will not come off as transparent if you wait too long to publish a response and your clients have to hear about a scandal from a third-party source.
Be Proactive
Would you rather have your company’s stakeholders find out that your team has made a major mistake from you, or from their social media accounts? Imagine if a close friend of yours got conspicuously arrested, and instead of texting you, they waited for you to notice what happened from videos on your Twitter feed. You’d understandably be frustrated! That’s how your clients and associates feel when you reactively respond to a crisis instead of being proactive.
To be proactive, think from the perspective of your business’s stakeholders. Consider what would make them feel more comfortable with the quality and reputation you provide. “When we understand what our most likely types of risks are, we can then take a look at who are the stakeholder groups, the people that matter most to the business and what will they expect of our organization in the event of something negative occurring?” Agnes said.
Take Responsibility
The absolute worst thing you can do when you know your company made a mistake is to try to cast the blame upon others. Showing a commitment to making amends and solving the problem will please your customers much more. Responding with a sincere apology will increase your credibility in the future and is likely to prevent your clients from holding a grudge against you.
A good apology shows that you are strong enough to admit your failures. It also aligns you with your clients and audience instead of deepening your divisions; you both believe that something went wrong and that it shouldn’t happen again. A stellar example that Agnes provides is: “This is my fault, I’m sorry, and here’s what we’re doing to make sure this never happens again, because it was unacceptable.”
Remember The Employees
When a crisis strikes, you might become so focused on satiating external stakeholders and clients that you forget to address your employees. That would be a crucial error. Your employees are even more invested in your company than your clients; it’s where they get their paycheck, where they’ve chosen to spend most of their time, and it hopefully gives them a sense of pride and composes part of their identity.
In addition to training your employees on how to deal with a crisis and manage your public relations, it’s your responsibility to ensure that they don’t fall off the handle either. Crisis situations are often when employees decide to quit, either because they worry that they won’t get paid or they feel ashamed of their workplace. Part of your response plan should always involve calming your staff’s fears.
It’s Your Turn
This week, we learned from Melissa Agnes how to transform a crisis from a source of terror to a positive development. The main principle is the same as it is for most communications tasks: transparency is key.
What about you? Have you ever found a highly effective way to deal with crises?
