The After Crisis Management Plan: How to Deal with Remnants of a Past Crisis Still Affecting Your Business * Incedo Group

The After Crisis Management Plan: How to Deal with Remnants of a Past Crisis Still Affecting Your Business

Comcast changing a customer’s name to a**hole brown after trying to cancel a subscription, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and General Motor’s massive recalls –these are all massive company crises.

Sometimes, a crisis can easily be solved—or covered up by a good crisis management team— other times it lingers like a flu you can’t shake off.

Right now, when it comes to car recalls, the first name that may come to your mind is GM. That’s because in reality, a company crisis isn’t over until you’re no longer associated or defined by what happened.

Even when the media attention has died down, your investors, clients, and even your employees may still feel apprehensive. Rumors, incorrect information, exaggerated news and other concerns can linger years after the problem was resolved.

If you want to rebuild your company’s reputation, you’ll have to develop effective communication strategies designed for after-crisis management.

Here’s How to Deal with the Aftermath of a Company Crisis

Crisis Management 101: Assess the Situation Before You React

A “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality will lead to more problems. So before making any plans or issuing a speech of some sort, I suggest you do some reconnaissance.

Tap into the grapevine. What are people saying about you and your company? Are people still talking about that fiasco 6 months ago? Who’s upset? Are your customers and suppliers wary of doing business with you? Effective communication strategies are based on current facts, not conjecture.

Think of yourself like a politician on election year: you have to monitor how people think of you and how they respond to any mention of the problem your company was involved in.

Mum’s the Word

Many company executives and politicians undergo training for effective communication skills, and that includes developing the patience to stay quiet until they have a clear idea what’s going on. You should strive to develop that skill, too.

Draft Key Messages Based on Your Findings

Keep investors and clients in the loop, even months after the crisis has been resolved. Update them about the solutions you implemented—whether things are going well or if there were hiccups along the way.

Draft a message for your employees, too. Don’t leave them in the dark. Because if they don’t know what’s happening, that will show in their performance—and pretty soon, the whole world will know about the unrest (or at least the lack of effective communication strategies) in your backyard.

It also helps if you appoint one person to announce all updates, as this eliminates the possibility of the message being inconsistent.

Repair Your Tarnished Reputation

As things go back to normal, have your crisis management team assess the impact of the problem to your company’s reputation and existing relationships in the community.

Meet your executive then implement effective communication strategies that will help everyone—your customers, suppliers, employees and stakeholders—forget the past and move forward.

You can issue a public apology, give coupons for free products, reimburse aggravated customers, and run a well-coordinated public relations campaign.

But after all that’s done, don’t forget to do a post-mortem analysis of the problem. What went wrong? What could be improved? Are there any missing chains in your crisis management plan? Are there now effective communication strategies in place to handle similar incidents in the future?