Your Crisis Communications

Why be concerned about crisis communications?

Here’s a list of situations that could effect your own organization, even if you have done nothing wrong:
 

• An irate former employee breaches security, enters your work place and threatens a former supervisor he or she blames for the termination.

• Rumors about your company and your products or services are started by a competitor.

• A key employee resigns and then distributes to the media confidential information on expansion, or a new product to be introduced in a highly competitive market.

• An advocacy group supported by church leaders claims your products are unsafe and threatens a boycott in your prime markets.

• Neighbors oppose your new plant under construction.

Carolina Image Builders has substantial experience in addressing such issues in this market and on the national level with professional groups, major corporations, and vulnerable associations. Chuck Werle has been a speaker on the subject at Crisis Communications Day at Western Carolina University and has authored guidelines published in a Chicago business publication.

So what do you do when your management wants the problem solved immediately?

Before you can communicate to your most important audiences, some basic questions must be answered:

• What happened?

• Where and when did it occur?

• What went wrong?

• How soon can the situation be corrected?

• Who is responsible?

• Who has suffered, or will, because of the situation?

Fortified with that vital information, you will be better prepared to select the most important audiences for immediate notification. One of them is bound to be the media. What you say and do at that critical point after the crisis can make all the difference in the outcome.