The Art of Crisis Management: Those Who Plan Succeed, Those Who Snooze Lose
While I don’t wish for your holidays this year to be anything but wonderful, especially after the year that we have all been struggling through, but let’s imagine that while cooking your Thanksgiving turkey, your oven bursts into flames. The fire quickly grows out of control and you realize your fire extinguisher is no match for its greedy flames that have already started to incinerate your kitchen cabinets. Your first instinct, after your fire extinguisher fails, is to dial 911 and your reasoning would be because, once the well-trained and equipped firefighters arrive, they will be able to stop the fire in no time. You assume they will quickly assess the cause of the fire and figure out a way to terminate it quickly. They might even present you with a report detailing the cause of the fire and ways to prevent the same incident from occurring in the future.
However, what if they didn’t come to your home with time-tested fire quenching knowledge or the equipment they need to manage the fire and lessen its impact on your home? Suppose they even suggest a wait and see approach when they arrive to figure out if the fire will stop on its own. Both you and I would consider this unacceptable. It is generally assumed that the fire department knows the type of crisis calls they have the potential to receive and should be trained and prepared to handle any type of fire emergency. In business, consumers also hold the brands they support to the same level of expectation in times of reputational crisis.
For example, a Burger King restaurant in Oklahoma City refused to provide service to a deaf woman via their drive-thru because their drive-thru line was too long, so they were too busy. The employees including the restaurant manager stated, even though she had a sleeping child in her vehicle, that they would only take her order at the counter inside the restaurant. What could have been resolved at the store-level, quickly escalated into a crisis involving police, lawyers, and the media. To this day, there is still speculation as to whether a Burger King executive or a senior spokesperson reached out to apologize to this customer directly. It has been confirmed in multiple news articles, however, that the manager involved was fired and the staff underwent disability sensitivity training.
Unfortunately, it appears that Burger King used a wait and see approach in this case, allowing the media and the victim to control the narrative. However, utilizing a crisis management plan would have allowed a group of empowered and experienced staff to help their brand recover from this crisis quickly. Instead of standing motionless, watching the fiery flames of public opinion consume their company’s reputation, they could have used an established plan to guide the decisions they made when as they began the process of correcting the unfortunate mistake and regaining the trust of their consumers. If the process was implemented early enough, the crisis team may even be able to lessen the reputational damage. Even better, by making time to create a crisis team before an issue arises and proactively evaluating internal and external factors responsible for crisis situations and identifying organizational strategies for preventing crisis Burger King could have prevented this very type of crises before it occurred.
After the incident occurred, however, Burger King could have used simple customer service techniques to lessen the damage this incident caused to the company’s reputation instead of fueling the fire with inaction. To start, they could have had a senior spokesperson contact the customer directly and offer apologies on behalf of Burger King, gathered her description of the incident as well as that of the staff and made changes to prevent the incident from recurring (trainings or employment terminations). Finally, they could have provided the customer with an update advising what measures were taken and provided her with coupons or gift cards all to show regret that she suffered such a negative experience while visiting one of their establishments.
One of the most important elements of a crisis management plan is configuring the chain of command for the crisis team. Although issues and accidents occur in real life, lots of times the conversation surrounding it begins to surface on the internet, so the social media monitoring and response team might discover the issue first. If they consider it an abnormal occurrence or a simple complaint escalating to something that could be detrimental to the brand, it requires conferring with management or possibly company executives. Once it reaches the executive level, I’m sure that all marketing and social activity will be postponed, and a crisis team meeting will be scheduled. Legal and human resources would provide their input on the situation before public relations or press specialists and social media managers are dispatched to issue statements of apology.
The issuer of the response would depend on where the crisis originates from or perhaps transfers to. If offline, the customer service member or their management staff should issue an empathetic apology to the offended customer or injured persons. They might privately offer to cover medical expenses or, like the recommendations made in the Burger King example they could offer coupons, discounts, or gift cards to try to make the incident right. If necessary, the company would even be expected to make operational changes and inform the customer of the changes made. If the issue occurs online, then the social media manager would be the frontline responder to the potential crisis, and they would also attempt to use basic customer service techniques to resolve the issue. However, if it escalates into a much larger issue, the social media professional would also need to get upper management involved in the process of privately rectifying it. Regardless of the origin of the issue or conversations surrounding it, the tone used is also important and should remain remorseful, empathetic, and authentically apologetic.
The last important element of a crisis management plan is the company’s approach with the press. In the first press conference following the crisis, the company must confirm the facts of the incident and detail how they are helping those affected. They must also reiterate the company mission and values that have led their business objectives thus far, which they will continue to use to guide them through the disheartening event.
The best example I could find of efficient crisis management occurred when, SZA, a popular African American R&B musician, visited a Sephora located in Calabasas, California. Once she entered the store to shop for Fenty cosmetics, a Sephora employee called security to ensure that the singer wasn’t stealing. After the incident, SZA posted a complaint on her Twitter timeline. The following day, Sephora replied to her post with an authentic apology and confirmed they were working with their teams to address the situation. However, in as much as the emergence of social media has brought in the advantage of fast, effective communication, it has also given room for the fast spread of negative communication. So, in the month following the incident, the social media conversations began, and thousands of other Sephora customers began to share their own Sephora store racial profiling experiences while others called for the employee to be fired. Rihanna, the founder of Fenty cosmetics, even sent SZA a Fenty gift card to peacefully shop on the site directly.
We all know that misinformation, rumors, negative opinions, and emotions are amplified on social media and crisis managers risk losing control of official messages when user-generated contents emerge and dominate the public opinion. So, in a final attempt to lessen the damage SZA’s Twitter post caused, Sephora to close all their stores nationwide so employees could complete diversity training. Also, although Sephora denies it, the singer’s unfortunate experience obviously prompted their new campaign featuring inclusion and diversity themes, which they titled We Belong to Something Beautiful. It’s evident that Sephora’s crisis management team was wise enough to take this opportunity to reiterate their company values and industry mission to effectively manage what turned into a major reputational social media crisis.
When it comes down to it, public opinion matters and when the opinion is negative, that can have a detrimental effect on any company. It all comes down to whether or not a company is armed with well-trained, equipped, and empowered employees to handle the inevitable moment when their company’s house of respectable repute is thrown into the flames of negative and hostile public opinion. Those who choose to snooze in the face of a crisis will continue to lose.