Crisis Communications

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Crisis Communications: What is it and why do I need it?

By Robin Anderson

Business is running as usual. The day-to-day occurrences are normal - everything is fine, until it’s not. No one plans for a crisis, they are the unforeseen events you have to manage. For small businesses in particular, when a crisis hits it is imperative that you respond quickly. Social media spreads like wildfire. Not responding will hurt your business, your reputation. It is vitally important that you control the narrative by getting information regarding the situation as quickly as possible. To do so effectively, advanced planning is essential, enabling you to be responsive as well as controlled. To do this, create a Crisis Communications Plan before you need it.

What is Crisis Communication?

Crisis communication refers to the dissemination of information by an organization to address a crisis that impacts customers and/or the organization's reputation. The crisis may consist of a natural disaster, security breach, or related to a financial situation. The purpose of a Crisis Communications plan is to prepare a business with how to respond when an emergency arises, enabling them to respond quickly and effectively.

Why do I need it?

Let’s say your product is cereal. One element of the cereal is manufactured in a facility that processes peanuts. While your cereal does not contain any peanuts, other ingredients, such as one within the same facility of peanuts, could potentially be contaminated, which for someone with a peanut allergy can be problematic, potentially causes a crisis. 

“...less than half of businesses have a formal crisis communication plan, and 23% have no plan at all.”

When an unexpected event happens, having a plan that has been thought through with a process and critical tasks identified, enables you to act quickly, minimizing confusion, and reducing the opportunity for misinformation to spread. It protects the reputation of your business, employees, and disruptions to your operations. And it helps to maintain the strong relationships you build with your customers, maintaining credibility as the plan enables you to provide context to the situation.

Scenarios where a crisis can happen:

There are a variety of scenarios that could be considered a business crisis that would necessitate a plan where communications are warranted. The crisis may consist of a natural disaster, security breach, or related to a financial situation. A change pertaining to a high-ranking member of your team, or other personnel could be considered a crisis as well.

When a crisis occurs, there is enormous pressure to address the situation and how you are going to respond through a multitude of communication channels. 

Crisis Communications Plan

A Crisis Communications Plan enables you to create a framework of the roles, responsibilities and actions that need to be taken when an emergency arises. It helps to minimize the chaos associated with a crisis as you have already established the steps that need to be taken to manage the situation.

1. Goal: Determine the objective of the plan per the situation.

2. Identify the members of the Crisis Response Team along with the hierarchy for sharing information (who to alert FIRST)

1. Roles and responsibilities: 

   • Lead

   • Spokesperson

   • Customer Support

   • Operations

   • Engineering

2. Pre-define levels of escalation: Assess risk & respond based on the level

   • Level 1 will be the highest level of crisis escalation. Typically requires immediate response. 

   • Level 2 may represent a moderate risk that could lead to customer loss. 

   • Level 3 long-term risk is minimal to business operations, customer success, however does require a response.

   • Level 4 may be simply an angry customer or delay in access to technology/reports.

3. Stakeholders with whom you will need to communicate with

4. Identify and outline potential crisis scenarios

5. Create an FAQ - facts about the crisis as well as answers to anticipated questions

6. Include steps to prepare for interactions with the press.

7. Guidelines for communications - map your social media plan to communicate, monitor and respond.

This all begins with the identification of a problem. Whoever discovers the problem, needs to share it with the lead. From there, the team should meet to review the problem, understand the level of difficulty related to the problem, how it can be resolved, and what will need to be done to communicate the problem. The key with this step is the more serious the problem, the higher the degree of importance of communicating with your key stakeholders in a timely manner. The longer you delay, the more likely it will work against you. With today’s news, much of which is shared via social media, the quicker you communicate the problem, what you are doing to resolve it, and what customers can do about it, the quicker you will be able to move on from this disaster.

The more information you can share through a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), the less hand-holding, responding to inquiries you will need to address. Make this available to the press, your customers and your social media followers.

Following the crisis, and after the dust has settled, it will be important to conduct a post-mortem with regard to how well your company responded to the crisis. Use this as a way to recognize the ways things were handled well, as well as note how things can be handled differently next time.

Minimize chaos and manage your reputation, by having a Crisis Communications Plan ready for when the inevitable emergency arises. A plan will help to ensure you respond according to the level of urgency with thoughtfulness and care. 

Need help creating your Crisis Communications Plan. Contact Us!

FunFact Friday

Companies from airlines, fast food to technology, have all experienced a crisis. Slack suffered a service outage in 2022, where users lost access to the application for close to 5 hours. Turns out the outage was a technical issue they were facing. Slack communicated with users throughout the situation with humor and with apologies, describing the work, and errors they encountered when fixing the problem. A great example of owning the problem and being transparent with customers.