Crisis Management is the process which organisations use to deal with disruptive and unexpected events that threaten to harm the organisation or its stakeholders. Covid-19 is a great example of the unexpected.
Whilst many businesses are struggling during Covid-19, some businesses are flourishing which is great news. However, if they haven’t got the capacity to scale up immediately to cope with the increased demand this could cause unforeseen issues later.
Crisis Management For SME’s
Whilst larger companies may have the luxury of a crisis management plan, person or team to call upon in such events, smaller businesses generally don’t.
One example of this is a company I’ve been working with who deliver food online. They have a great business and pride themselves on their excellent customer care and next day delivery service.
Almost overnight their business increased twelve fold after the Covid-19 lockdown announcement. A situation created by the ‘stay at home and save lives’ policy and the sudden lack of food on supermarket shelves through panic buying.
Fulfillment of orders wasn’t an issue initially. What hadn’t been anticipated was the delivery company leaving packages in their warehouse for prolonged periods, the loss of packages and in some cases theft of the packages.
Overnight the company’s social media page exploded. A stream of negative comments about the deliveries being late, food arriving out of date and parcels not turning up.
You can imagine the heartbreak for the business owner. Having worked tirelessly to build up the business and it’s excellent reputation. Especially as everyone, including him, had been working flat out to fulfil these orders. 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, all enquiries other than orders coming in got completely overlooked. This in turn created even more negative publicity.
Lessons Learned From This Crisis Management Experience
Although most people are very patient and understanding, there are always those who are quick to voice their opinion and criticise. Especially on social media.
In an ideal world a crisis management person or team would have been in place to dissolve the situation immediately. Unfortunately this company didn’t have that luxury.
Once a crisis management team was brought in it became clear that most people just wanted their questions answering. Once told about the delivery company issues, the theft of packages, the huge overnight spike in orders which had created an invisible queue, just like those visible outside the supermarkets, they became much more sympathetic.
So the moral of the story is …
If you don’t have a crisis management plan, person or team in place simply keep your customers up-to-date with whatever the situation is at all times. No matter how small the update, they appreciate it. Do this from the very beginning and make it a priority.
If you don’t have the time to do this yourself bring in a social media manager on a temporary basis to do it for you. They will probably do a better job anyway because they are impartial and not emotionally involved.
If you require some social media crisis management assistance please call me on 07904 007 660 for a free no obligation chat or visit www.rachelmooresocialmedia.com for further information.