How a business handles crises has an immense effect on its reputation. While errors or unavoidable events may occur, how you handle such crises is the cornerstone of reputation maintenance and survival.
Be proactive by developing and executing an appropriate crisis management plan before the situation escalates, so your team can react swiftly and decisively when disaster strikes.
Prepare for a crisis.
Preventing business crises through planning ahead is the key to mitigating them successfully. Drafting up tailored crisis plans that address likely scenarios can equip your team to act swiftly when an incident occurs.
Include all members of your team in the planning process, especially those responsible for responding publically, to ensure everyone understands key messages. This might include your chief officer (executive, operations), directors of communications (marketing/public relations/customer service/other), as well as others who would represent your organization during an incident or crisis.
Consider creating a crisis management team who will oversee response plans and actions during an emergency, whether they be regional emergency management teams, site emergency response teams or business support teams.
Natural Disaster: Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and winter storms are common natural crises that can damage or completely devastate areas that your company uses for business. Additional examples are wildfires and volcanic eruptions.
Financial Crises: Running out of funds to pay employees, suppliers or creditors constitutes a financial crisis for businesses. Other related instances could include unauthorised sales of confidential data or mismanaging company funds – these scenarios all pose unique financial problems that must be managed carefully to prevent disaster.
As your business expands and develops, its crisis management plans may need to be revised accordingly. This may be necessary due to changes such as adding more employees or opening additional offices, as well as altering its business model.
Communicate.
As soon as a crisis hits, your team must be ready to respond. Therefore, it’s vital that you create or at least establish the structure for a crisis management team and train it on how best to work during an incident. This training should focus on key leadership like chief officers or directors of communications, marketing and customer service who will need to communicate with customers and the media during any crisis situation.
As part of any crisis communication strategy, it is also vitally important to identify who your target audiences will be – this may include customers, suppliers and key stakeholders as well as employees impacted by it in customer-facing roles such as those working directly with customers. A matrix could prove invaluable here!
At times of crisis communication, it is vitally important that quick responses are swift. Carney and Jorden’s research demonstrates the value of quick reactions; silence allows others to control the narrative while prompt responses place organizations as active participants and in control of situations. Furthermore, Hearit’s studies suggest that expressions of concern could help lower claims against an organization.
Resolve.
As soon as a crisis strikes, immediate steps must be taken to rectify it. Any delay could cause irreparable harm. Being prepared ensures you can respond swiftly to a crisis situation and mitigate its impacts quickly.
Planned responses and communications strategies must address various types of crises your business could encounter, while simultaneously setting forth how stakeholders should be addressed during and after any such incidents occur. These communications include timely response, consistent messaging and comprehensive strategies.
Regular reviews should be performed to ensure that everyone in the company understands their roles and functions during a crisis, and to test how well these plans function; furthermore, any areas needing improvement should also be noted.
Establishing a crisis management plan enables you to take a proactive approach in handling any reputational issues that threaten to disrupt your business and save both time and money by being ready for anything unexpected. Take the time now to create your plan so you can feel secure that any unexpected business emergencies are covered if they arise – contact Shopivo now for help in developing one as well as training your staff on how to react when unavoidable crises arise.
Monitor.
Once a crisis has passed, teams should evaluate how successful their plan was and the effects it has had on employees, the brand(s), and reputation. This evaluation should take place formally with input from all relevant departments and stakeholders.
Next, establish and train employees who will participate in your crisis management plan. This will ensure everyone involved in handling any crisis knows the steps to take should one arise and can communicate confidently when asked questions by customers, media or others outside of your business. It will also give employees ownership over how best to handle a potentially volatile situation with poise.
An essential aspect of crisis preparedness is identifying warning signs. While this can be challenging, there may be clear indicators that something is amiss – for instance an unexplained drop in sales or unusual spike in complaints. Media monitoring is a powerful tool to detect these signals – it enables businesses to monitor the volume of online coverage related to their brand or industry as it develops over time, giving insight into its development over time and helping companies understand its size, trajectory and how the public responds.
