When an organization launches a product in the market, they assure that it benefits the general public in every way. The product goes through various checking processes, trials, and various other steps to make sure it is perfect and cannot harm the general public. But despite doing all the necessary checks sometimes the product does not do well in the market. Many times, a malfunction causes serious damage to the reputation of the organization’s brand and services and such a situation is called a “crisis”.
When you hire a PR agency, they are always ready for crisis communication and management plan in advance. Here are some guidelines for the organization that can be amended in a crisis communication plan to make it perfect for the future.
- As soon as the situation arises, if you are not prepared with the plan, you may get panic and not be able to handle it properly. The most important thing that is ignored in many cases is to instantly come forward in response to the situation. When an organization hides the facts and does not provide the right information on time, people start making stories that harm the reputation more. Hence, always be ready with a quick and effective response.
- When the crisis strikes, the reason may be big and the people may get affected by your product. If such a thing happened because of your product, always try to understand the damage and loss faced by the general public caused by your product. If it is genuine, the first thing to do is to apologize with all sincerity. Take responsibility for the damage and try to rebuild the trust you lost.
- When a crisis happens, many organizations avoid taking responsibility and try to blame others which is the worst thing you can do to hurt the sentiments of your customers. If you are not the culprit still despite putting all your efforts into blaming others, you should concentrate on handling the damage, and prioritizing the audience’s feelings and expectations.
- Keep all the necessary transparency while providing the information to the general public during a crisis. When the situation arises, you are on the radar of every person including the stakeholders, general public, and media. Providing wrong or incomplete information on public platforms may further damage the reputation of the organization. Media may make their own story and publish it on various platforms which can be very harmful to the company’s reputation. In such situations retaining the reputation again becomes quite difficult for the organization and it takes lots of PR efforts to keep all things on track. So better be true and transparent in front of the public.
- Always work towards building a community of trusted people that may be supportive when anything wrong happens with the reputation of the organization. When the words come directly from the users or the general public, people trust more on them rather than the words from someone from the organization. And this can only be possible if you build a community of trusted people who be faithful to the organization even in a crisis.
