Crises happen! They are part of our lives – personally and professionally. They can happen to everyone and every company.
Crises bring change; they can change your life or your company’s future. How you behave during crisis and how you deal with it, matters. It can have a ripple effect on a lot of things and a lot of people!
Trusting our instincts in such occasions it is often not enough as we might overreact. We may not have a set plan for personal crisis but in the case of a company we can surely prepare for crisis.
The way executives and directors behave in a crisis can change the fate of thousands of people, entire companies, even an entire industry.
Here are four steps for effectively managing any crisis:
Step1: Build Your Team
Assign roles
Determine everyone’s roles before anything bad happens and make sure everyone knows what they’re supposed to be doing.
– Who will take ownership for the overall strategy
– Who is responsible for monitoring and finding potential crises?
– Who will inform key stakeholders?
– Who will be handling social media conversations?
– Who will be handling messages that come in through other channels?
– Which executive will act as a spokesperson for the media?
Get ready to assemble
Make sure everyone involved is ready to take over at a moment’s notice. Put together a process to make sure everyone can be reached ASAP.
– List most crucial contact info for each member of your crisis team.
– What scope of reach/impact should an event have to call it a crisis?
– How will you first contact the team should an emergency arrive?
Define a crisis
Distinguish the difference between a negative event and a full-out disaster. Your crisis team doesn’t need to be “called in” every time there’s an angry tweet.
– Define the scenarios and set a procedure for each one
– How severe does a situation need to be to consider it a crisis?
– What will be the game plan if there’s someone you cannot immediately reach?
Step 2: Define Your Priorities
Prioritize goals
Depending on the seriousness of the situation, controlling the damage may take time. A crisis cannot by erased overnight. Set a priority for your goals; which are most important and immediate, and which are longer-term.
– What is the most important outcome of your crisis management?
– What is your secondary goal?
– List any additional minor goals here.
Identify your audience
Dealing with customers, investors, partners and press at the same time may be hard to cope. However, they all must be dealt with by setting priorities.
– Who must you address first?
– Who are the audiences for your secondary and minor goals?
Determine core message
Highly important! What do you say? Your team should be giving a common message should reinforcing your brand’s overall core messaging.
– What are your brand’s top values?
– What is your #1 value proposition to customers?
Step 3: Set Processes
Create guidelines
Set guidelines for responses on each platform and to each audience.
– Communicating with key stakeholders and executives.
– Network-specific guidelines for communicating on social media
– For updates via your website and other online company channels
– Advising all employees on how to respond to inquiries.
Write templates
Depending on the situation means of course that you will have to customize the message with as much detail as possible. However, it is a good idea to prepare with to respond to common questions and not forget anything important.
– Write a template for your initial response – a brief statement acknowledging the situation ASAP.
– Create guidelines for providing updates to the public throughout the crisis.
– Craft update templates for key stakeholders.
– What are some questions you know you’ll be asked? Write answer templates.
Find ways to spot crises
Create an ongoing process for crisis monitoring.
– What tool(s) will you use to monitor for brand crises?
– Who is responsible for the management of the tool?
Step 4: Measure & Reflect
Measure brand impact
Determine the overall impact the crisis might have on your brand.
– What will your KPIs for successful crisis management be?
– How will you measure the negative conversations generated?
– How will you measure impact on overall brand sentiment?
– How will you measure overall brand impact of this even over time?
Reflect on processes
Examine how well did you manage the crisis and how processes can be improved.
– What were the strongest aspects of your brand’s crisis plan?
– Where was the existing strategy unhelpful or less impactful?
– Are there any processes or templates that need to be revised?
– Do you need to create any new systems or guidelines?
Create long-term plan
Even if the dust has settled, you will still get people asking about it or commenting on social media. Plan your response to this for the long term.
– How will you manage a long-term conversation about this event?
– Do you need to provide continual updates long-term to any of your audiences?
Yours Truly,
Chrystalla