Establishing Calm After A Storm - How To Manage Post-crisis Outreach

By Author: Akansh Malik
Total Articles: 67
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When the firm whose reputation you are the custodian of runs into a crisis, it can often seem like the very worst thing you can imagine has happened. Thanks to the ease of social media and the internet, a minute problem could snowball into a major threat to the reputation of the firm. This leaves the firm vulnerable to criticism from various factions and may even lead to the loss of clients, loss of consumers, distrust from investors and falling behind competitors.
To counteract the effects of a crisis and provide the ideal crisis communication support, here is what you should do:

Share A Simple And Consistent Response With Stakeholders And The World:
Once crisis hits, you will have to release a statement from the firm commenting on the same. This is the official stand of the firm and should be simple and straightforward. You must make sure to address the crisis, but not in an aggressive way. This official statement must be made ...
... known to all stakeholders as well, so that if they are ever asked to comment on the crisis, their message will also be in line with the official stand of the firm. This is essential to display a cohesive post-crisis outreach message.

Pay Attention To The Word On The Street:
After a crisis, it is very important to keep a check on what is being said about your firm – whether on social media or in the news. You should be able to modify your strategy in real time according to the level of damage the crisis has caused to the firm’s reputation. To gauge this level, you have to analyse the public’s perception of the firm on a regular basis post-crisis. If a comment warrants an official reply, make sure that you are the one advising it to prevent any rash statements or unauthorised company standpoints.

Apologise Or Clarify Appropriately:
Depending on the level of the crisis, you may need to render an apology or clarify a situation to clients or customers. If it is just a bad review, or an inaccurate allegation, it can be nipped in the bud with a direct apology or any other appropriate action. But if the crisis is large enough to negatively impact the firm’s reputation to even a moderate level, an immediate wider scale apology or clarification is required. For example, on the 6th of October, 2014 Flipkart had planned a mega sale on their e-commerce website under the title of Big Billion Day. But the supply of discounted items could not meet the demand, the servers crashed and many online shoppers were left dissatisfies and angry. As a way to quell the crisis, a mass apology letter was issued by Flipkart’s founders, who clarified the situation of unexpected customer demand as well as technical failure and apologised for not having kept their promise. This diffused tension to a great extent and the personal note of the apology letter made it much harder to bear a grudge.

By following some of the steps mentioned about, you can effectively put into action crisis communication services and make sure the firm’s reputation can be brought back on track in a smart and timely manner post a crisis.