I recently had a chat to Sam from MediaManoeuvres about Crisis Management.
It’s ironic that no one really wants to think about the thing we most need to think about – what happens when something goes wrong. It can even be seen as a bit of a waste of time, because, you know, what if nothing ever goes wrong and you did all that planning for nothing?
Seriously? Do you know any business anywhere that’s never had anything go wrong? Maybe it doesn’t need to be as elaborate as an airline’s, but having some sort of plan, or at least a general philosophy about what approach you’ll take if something does go wrong, can come in super handy. Even if it’s just how you’ll handle an unhappy and vocal customer or a bad online review. The last thing you want to have to do is make decisions like that under pressure. Or knee jerk a reaction that sends you viral for all the wrong reasons.
(I was recently handling social media for a client in a caretaker capacity over the holiday break when a particularly challenging customer was very vocal in his criticism or all and sundry, and it was super useful that I was able to handle it with a fair degree of confidence, knowing I could publicly hold them accountable because this was within the company’s values. As a senior person with a clear understanding of the brand values and ethos surrounding these issues, it was easy for me to do. For a more junior person, having a clear policy on this would have been imperative, and with an organic audience of 13,000+ on that particular thread, super important.)
Click here if you’d like to read the full article. And if you’d like any help putting a Crisis Management Plan together, by all means just ask.
Sputnik
