Why Planning for A Crisis Can Save Your Business
Business owners don’t want to think about a potential crisis, but if you don’t, you could come to lose everything.
Most people think it’s bad luck to consider the worst possible effect their service, product or business might have on a customer. But, truth be told, it’s always best to plan for any potential crisis your business might experience.
Most businesses from banks and restaurants to major corporations have a crisis plan and revise it annually, so why shouldn’t a small business also plan ahead.
Over the years, looking at some of the worst PR crisis of our time, I can tell you one thing: Lack of an immediate response to consumers/customers/clients can result in an instant decline in referrals and faith in your business, resulting in lagging sales, pink slips and worse.
And the advent and growth of social media mean that bad news can travel faster than the speed of light and snowball out of control.
To avoid this, plan for the potential of the future, even if it doesn’t happen.
Think about it: Mattel’s debacle with toys from China, China’s (seemingly) never-ending exportation of bad and unhealthy, even poisonous, products, political scandals, oil spills, and even Britney Spears, need some expert help every now and again and it goes far beyond these examples.
How will you deal with bad reviews online? Yelp, Facebook, etc. That hits home to everyone.
Some key elements you should include in your business’ crisis communications plan are:
Think of everything that could possibly go wrong in your business, even down to one upset customer leaving scathing comments or reviews online. Today, sadly, everything and anything is up for grabs as a “crisis.”
Take Responsibility — In these situations a company is always guilty until proven innocent. Remember this is the court of opinion, not a court of law.
Communications Goals — What message will you have pre-crafted to immediately send to customers, clients and possibly press? Who will act as the company spokesperson, who will also be responsible for keeping an open line of communication with customers and the public? It’s good to craft several messages to cover a variety of situations. Be prepared is the motto.
Research — Who will conduct research to look into the situation? How will you communicate that — by press release, email?
Develop a strong team — Hire people smarter than you to put together a step-by-step plan that can be easily activated, should it be needed. Listen to these people. Let them guide you and when they say “get out in front of it,” do it. It may even be worthwhile to hire them to help manage the crisis.
A Solution — You can determine this beforehand and customize it for the specific situation (in which case you should just implement and not wait), or it may completely change and be developed in a closed-door session with staff based on the immediate situation.
Show the public and your customers what your company plans to do to keep this from happening again (i.e. new policies, new procedures, more staff — a new supervisor, new product lines, better communication resources). Whatever makes the most sense to your business and will show customers and the public that you are actively committed to not letting anything bad happen in the future.
Now, I’ve simplified these to the basic steps but it isn’t always easy, so having a plan and understanding your approach will, indeed, go a long way.
The key to planning for any potential crisis situation is to be prepared for anything to happen and be confident in how you will handle it. You may lose some business but you can ultimately save your brand, your business’ reputation and even come out better on the other side if you plan well now.
Once a crisis occurs, it’s too late to put a plan in place. The delay in communicating to customers could result in lost accounts, business, clients, and customers that you may never be able to recover.
