Blog

Crisis Management for Your Brand

Retrieving your customer’s confidence and trust and reinstituting the reputation is one major way-out to put an end to the blaze caused by a crisis. Often companies control a crisis without planning the next ‘big’ step which automatically hinders the comprehensive reputation plan and also baffle the aim to restore the quality and standards of the services/products offered by the brand.

The PR agency and your internal team are usual saviours in this case to encourage the impacted employees, stakeholders, customers and other associates. Usually companies come handy with advance crisis management planning and train their internal wing for majority of the situations that may occur unknowingly. Experienced PR companies always highlight the need of a broad plan in order to fire-fight when a crisis strikes.

Established PR companies in Delhi which offers reputation rebuilding and crisis management amongst other services focus majorly on the idea to inform and enlighten about the practices in the wake of a vagary. Lincoln, the former US president once said in a political argument that ‘‘Public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed’’. It is strong and appropriate in a crisis held situation, where public opinion is of utmost important.

A quick peep at few crisis management steps that every small/ big companies shall have in place.

Identify and Acknowledge: The first step to rebuild the trust and reputation of your customers and company, respectively, is to acknowledge the root cause of the problem. How did it happen? Where were we slacking? What impacts it may have on us? A lot of PR agencies focus on formation of an investigation team to take the above necessary steps.

Choose the Right Spokesperson: Make sure the front face you choose delivers a consistent message and speaks with one voice, as a lot of crisis situations may attract media attention. The person must be identified and be prepared with the media Q&A’s and interviews.

Construct Honesty and Empathy: Lack of transparency & honesty can call out for a lot of negative media outrage. Being upright and promptly accepting the mistake is one step, suggested by majority of Integrated Communications Company. Projecting transparency and a solution to the crisis through all channels must be the next most important step.

Competitor’s Perspective: The moment you fall into the crisis, your competitors will not miss the opportunity to poach your clients. Here, think from their perspective and be quick to react and act to the situation, connect with your clients and hold on. Your crisis plan must include this.

Manage Social Media: Your customers are there on social media everywhere. Integrated marketing agencies offering social media marketing also focuses a lot on managing posts on social media platforms. Seek help from social media experts to form the right plan to reach out to your audiences in the right way.

Regain The Company’s Reputation: It is a detailed and planned process to rebuild a company’s reputation. Having done without a planned process, you may never come out of apprehensions, or shadows of misgivings. Make a plan consulting your PR agency ensuring that nothing of the same sorts happen to the brand again and rebuild reputation around it.

It takes years for a company to build reputation with the right branding strategies and a crisis could harm it in no time. Therefore, it is extremely important to handle a crisis situation with detailed and valuable measures.