Have you found your business in a sticky situation? If the answer is yes, then you need to call a crisis management team.
What is a crisis management team?
One minute your business could be running smoothly and then the next a crisis will strike. This could be anything from a computer virus or an utterly sour PR blunder. Fortunately, our crisis management team are highly experiences. We are often called in to protect a business or organisation against the potential effects of a crisis, we also help prepare businesses to deal with future threats.
What’s the role of a crisis management team?
At VerriBerri, our crisis management team are specially trained to primarily focus on:
Detecting the early signs for when a crisis arises. Identifying where the problem lies. Preparing and devising a plan which will help tackle the issue. Motivating employees. Encouraging employees and businesses to face the problem head on and react in an accurate and timely manner. Helping the business come out of hard times and prepare for future incidents.
How can we help you?
We like to say, ‘when all else fails, our crisis management team doesn’t.’ With this ethos in mind, any savvy business owner will understand that their reputation takes years to build and an hour to ruin, so why run the risk of falling victim to a silly mistake?
It makes perfect sense for every business to come equipped with their very own crisis management team; so when it comes down to it you’re ready to tackle the press.
Unfortunately, bad publicity can land on your doorstep when you least expect it. Whether it’s a poorly thought-out tweet or a misquote in the paper; you can never be completely sure of what damage it will do to your business’ reputation.
Therefore, it’s important to make sure you know how to deal with bad publicity when it does come around, as it will be extremely beneficial to your business to you have a plan in place.
Just in case you don’t know where to start, our crisis management team have put together a guide on dealing with bad publicity:
● Understand that you cannot go unscathed
Of course, in an ideal world, there would be no such thing as a PR crisis or bad publicity but as above, either of these things could affect your business at any time! This could be due to faults within your online PR strategy, social media errors or as the result of an incident when dealing with a customer. While it’s not easy to predict when and how these are going to happen, it’s important to accept that such things could occur and you should prepare for if and when they do.
● Start preparing as soon as possible
In the event of a PR crisis, you should try to deal with it straight away to mitigate any damage it’s going to cause. You would be surprised at the amount of businesses who do nothing and just hope it will all die down. Unfortunately, this will not happen, the media and journalists are designed to create a narrative and make a story worse than it actually is. When this is coupled with an irate customer silence is far from golden.
● Learn from the event and move on.
You certainly shouldn’t pretend an error never happened but by the same token don’t get too hung up on it. Instead, show your customer base you have taken things on board by acknowledging the problem, fixing it properly and emerging better than before. This will help restore public confidence in your brand and start to heal any damage.
● Get a team in place
It’s your first major PR crisis and you’re having to deal with it on your own; how do you feel? Overwhelmed is probably the first word we would use! Whilst it may be hard to hear, by going it alone you may have caused damage to your brand’s reputation. However, if you have a PR team on board to help prepare a crisis management strategy prior to the event, they will be able to make sure you’re ready to protect your business’ reputation, thus minimising any brand damage in the eyes of your customers.
We have worked with multiple businesses who are going through a rough patch. Our crisis management team develop an efficient and unique crisis management strategy so you can handle any bad publicity you may have either now or in the future.
If your business or organisation needs a crisis management strategy, or want to find out about our reputation management pricing, get in touch with our team of experts.