No matter how much faith you have in your product/service, your team or how bulletproof you think your brand is, with the increasing number of access points from joe public online, no business can afford to sit back and rest on its laurels when it comes to crisis preparedness.
So what exactly is a crisis?
The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition is:
“A time of great danger, difficulty or confusion when problems must be solved or important decisions must be made”.
Ultimately, the way you deal with a crisis will have lasting impact on your reputation and the future of your business.
So today we are asking you to ask yourself what measures have you got in place to deal with a crisis effectively.
- Are you prepared?
- Are you aware of potential crises/threats to your business?
- Do you have a crisis handling plan?
- Are you proactively monitoring online conversations?
- Have you identified your crisis handling team and are they fully aware of their roles and responsibilities?
- Is your crisis handling team trained to deal with should a problem arise?
- Have you got access to all the technology you need to be as responsive as possible?
So our final thoughts on the matter… You can allow others to shape perceptions of you, your business and your actions during a crisis or you can attempt to control this by taking an early active role.
Plan for the worst and don’t just hope for the best!