Acting before something becomes a crisis is often the best way to deal with it. However that’s not how most businesses seem to think and in recent times I’ve been focussing a lot on how to deal with crises with social media.
It’s also something that comes up all the time in Orchard seminar training sessions. ‘What do I do when it all goes wrong?’ is a very familiar refrain.
As has been said before on this blog, and by many others, communicating quickly and honestly, and engaging with your customers or contacts in a human way, is the best way to go about things. There are handy statistics to back this up and this infographic shows the impact that this communication has on the perception of brands in crisis.
Businesses make mistakes. So do people. This is a fact of life, but what if, instead of focusing on lessening the impact of our mistakes, we focus instead on how not to make them – or even on how to turn a looming crisis situation into a positive PR experience.
It’s been referenced many times before but the ‘United Breaks Guitars‘ video is a good case in point. What if, instead of refusing a popular musician a new guitar and therefore ensuring he would take to the internet immediately, United had agreed to replace the guitar and ‘encouraged’ him to write a song extolling the virtues of their customer services?
Take the recent example of Luka Apps for example. Someone at Lego (probably in the PR department!) is obviously on the lookout for opportunities to show off. They recognised the potential of a, seemingly minor, lost minifig. Instead of risking adverse publicity (‘Lego wouldn’t replace my figure,’ says heartbroken boy etc) Lego replaced the figure and also allowed their customer service team to reply in a way that was fun, engaging and human. This turned a routine replacement toy into a media story and got the company valuable positive online sentiment for the brand.
We can’t all be as fun as Lego but if businesses take that much care over their customer interactions, and ensure that their public relations people are involved in all forms of communication, then pitfalls will be avoided and the massive potential for generating positive profile and improving reputations will be realised.