Does Your Crisis Communications Plan Click?
July’s CrowdStrike failure brought crisis and disaster recovery planning back to the forefront of everyone’s minds. As we watched the debacle play out online and on social media, it became increasingly clear that even when they knew what was going on, most companies weren’t adequately prepared to communicate with their customers. With so many ways to disseminate information, that is a failure that really shouldn’t happen!
In a recent article on Inc.com by Stephanie Mehta, Pager Duty CEO Jennifer Tejada discusses the failure and highlights the fact that many companies don’t have effective response plans in place.
Here at Click, we’ve been working with our partners and customers to help them develop communication plans that deliver the right information, to the right people, at the right time. And with in-house expertise in crisis management and disaster recovery, we wanted to share some of our learnings and best practice.
Why Do You Need a Crisis Communication Plan?
During a crisis of any kind, people look for information. If you, as a business, don’t provide it quickly and consistently, then your customers, partners, stakeholders and employees WILL go looking for it! That means increased traffic hitting your website, a surge in calls to your customer service lines, emails to your account managers, and potentially negative posts on your social media accounts. If you’re busy figuring out impacts, fixes and timelines, then you don’t need to be fending off questions to which you don’t yet have the answers!
Creating Your Plan:
When you’re building your communication plan remember to AIM. Your plan should be:
- Adaptable – no two issues are the same, so your plan shouldn’t be designed around one problem. Be prepared for change.
- Integrated – a communication plan should be part of your wider disaster recovery planning process. Make sure all departments are involved in the planning process and know where and how they fit into the plan.
- Managed – be prepared to work through and update your plan on a regular basis. System updates, CRM changes, reporting structures etc. all need to be integrated into your plan as soon as possible.
Top Tips:
- DATA, DATA, DATA. Your data must be clean, available, up-to-date, and depending on your location, it should comply with data protection laws such as GDPR.
- Segmentation is Key. Not all your customers or contacts need to know about every issue. Segmenting your contacts into groups depending on their contact status, job title, size of account, user profile etc. will ensure that your message reaches the right people quickly and efficiently.
- Use Real-time Data. That means utilizing your CRM, not spreadsheets. Relying on spreadsheets for a communication plan is fraught with potential issues. Unless you’re pulling information daily, it’s likely to be completely out-of-date, and data corruption is a real risk.
- Use Native Tools. Third party apps that rely on data transfers or API’s can cause unexpected and unnecessary delays. Using tools and software that are natively integrated into your CRM prevents data transfer issues and provides the reassurance that your customer data remains in your control.
- Don’t try this at home! Trust the experts. Using your own email servers to send critical and time-sensitive messages likely won’t end well. You’re liable to overload your servers or end up seeing your emails hit spam filters. Probably both!
Sending the Right Message
- Keep it simple: In some cases, that means DON’T WAIT until you have all the facts. Let your customers know that you’re aware of the situation and that more information will be available shortly.
- Single Source: Have one person/team that is responsible for disseminating information. Ensure that ALL your employees know if it doesn’t come from that singular source, it’s either misinformation or disinformation – and both of those create chaos in a crisis.
- Use all your communication platforms: email, website, SMS, voicemail, social media. Don’t assume that because you’ve sent an email, your customers are now informed.
- Keep it “on-brand” and official: Try to keep your messaging as professional as possible. Using email templates that incorporate your company branding will look more professional and trustworthy – especially if they up being shared with a wider audience.
- Be consistent: If your text says one thing, make sure that all your messaging channels are saying the same thing. Don’t mix your messaging!
- If you have account managers for large (or at risk) accounts – use them. Get the message out personally.
- Don’t forget about inbound: Whilst you want to avoid encouraging people to contact you directly, know that they will, and ensure that your messaging is consistent. Think about tip 2 – ensure ALL your employees know where to access the most up-to-date information.
Whilst these tips are by no means exhaustive, we hope they’ll provide guidance and “food for thought” as you build your own.
Click’s Marketing Automation, Social Media and Sales Engagement tools are an integral part of communication planning for our partners and customers. Whether it’s using our Email Designer to create on-brand templates, utilizing our social tools to send consistent messaging across all social channels, or trusting us to send emails that will always be delivered, Click is part of the plan.
We would be delighted to discuss how Click can help you develop a plan for your business.
For more information visit Click or speak to your account manager to find out more!
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