Parker Trewin the VP of corporate communications at Freshworks, shares important rules & guidelines on drafting an effective crisis communication plan; especially during the time of a pandemic like the novel coronavirus. This video is the third in the Adapt series where we feature experts from various fields who have a proven track record in maintaining business continuity during exceptional times like these.

#Communication #BusinessPlan #Leadership

Read the blog: [ Ссылка ]

To start off, could you walk us through the different kinds of crises that a business can face?
A business crisis is anything that threatens the company’s long term ability to conduct business. Outside of this pandemic that we’re facing, there are lots of types of crises that can come up – including network outages when your system goes down, or security and data breaches and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina that we saw here in the United States.

Sometimes, employees behave badly, and there are HR crises that come up around sexual harassment or discrimination. Sometimes, there’s an unexpected transition that can impact the business. Last year a major medical center lost their CEO of seven years quite unexpectedly and they had to react to the transition of that and provide communications around that too. Understandably, in all these situations, it’s important to describe the impact on the business and what it means to customers.

Customer service is one of those teams that is constantly in touch with customers during a crisis. So, as a corporate communications expert, do you have any general rules or guidelines that you would suggest that they follow?
Absolutely. I look at five things when you’re personally communicating, since service and support reps are on the frontlines.

#1 Do no harm

The first rule that I always say is – do no harm. So if you are at the frontlines, when a crisis happens, you need to take a breath, and understand that you are supported by a team. And that the team will have a communications plan for you. What you don’t want to do is have a knee jerk reaction, or inadvertently throw more fuel onto the fire. So often the best course is holding back, and making sure that you’re supporting the plan.

#2 Have a common voice

Treat your crisis communication strategy as the source of truth to make sure that your entire organization has a common voice. Also, the first thing you need to do when there’s an issue or an event that warrants an apology is state what happened, state the implications (if any), and what you’re going to do to fix it.

#3 Don’t improvise
Thirdly, always stick to the communications plan. Right now, for example, things are evolving all the time. We often don’t know what the next course will be. So it’s best to stick to the communications plan and stick to known resources as well.

#4 Coordinate closely with your employees
Make sure that everybody’s connected, and that they’re involved, so that everybody understands what the plan is. It’s important that you have buy-in from all your employees, and reduce the inconsistencies.

#5 Be empathetic, be human
Lastly, we are communicating at a time when not only now, but all these situations have real impact on people’s abilities to do their jobs, and their ability to conduct their lives. If we look at the person on the other side and spend just a second to think about what it’s like in their shoes – that is a great starting point.

Can you give us some tips on what else organizations should communicate in order to ensure that a crisis is taken care of effectively and efficiently?
There are a few things that go beyond the personal communications that you have, and beyond the crisis plan that’s already been set up. These things are included in the plan and follow-ups, for whenever it’s necessary for the company to make a public statement. That might be on one or many of the channels that you have. It might be on Twitter. It might be a landing page or a status page. It might be via your health center.

The other thing that is really helpful is providing an update. So, for instance, when you have an outage, often you’ll have a website where you can go to get an immediate update that says – here’s when the outage occurred and here’s what the current status is. Along with the update, you have to make sure that you communicate when the problem occurred, and by what time the problem is likely to be resolved.

Then finally, I think it’s really important that you link to the appropriate resources. There is a lot of information that is going out – some of it is good, and some, not so good. I’m sure it’s all very well intended. But, I would recommend that everybody stick to the most reliable resources in all situations. So for instance, with the Covid-19 pandemic, you could look to the World Health Organization or to your local government entity. Here in the United States, we often refer to the CDC.

свернуть