Corporate Reputation Management

Reputation

Warren Buffet: Takes 50 years to build and five minutes to ruin it.

Reputation is very fragile, only one mistake can cause irreparable damage. With the digital world, a high level of transparency is required and expected from stakeholders. It is not an option to ignore digital voices.

Types of Crisis

1. Natural Crisis — Out of human control, natural disasters

2. Technological Crisis — Failure of technology (e.g. breakdown of machines, software corrupted)

3. Confrontation Crisis — Employees/Employers fight among themselves, do not agree with each other (e.g. boycotts—-disobey leaders and give ultimatums)

4. Crisis of Malevolence — Notorious employees commit illegal acts and take extreme steps (e.g. kidnapping, false rumors, fraud)

5. Crisis of Organizational misdeed — Management takes harmful actions despite knowing the potential consequences. (e.g. Prioritise profit over employee safety.)

Manage a crisis successfully

1. Step 1: Detect the crisis
   > Customers: Lack of satisfaction
   > Employees: Motivation, Productivity
   > Business performance declining

   Perform Social Listening
   Set the right expectations for organization (e.g Will respond within 3-5 business days)
   

2. Step 2. Determine action plan
   > Most useful tools/channels
   > Establish a 24-hour taped hotlines
   > Develop key messages
   > Establish place and time to speak to the media
   > What you need to succeed: Key people, new solutions, experts
   > Be transparent: Do not ignore posts
   

3. Step 3: Execute
   >Respond thoughtfully (Retail customer reports 33% posted a positive review, 34% deleted bad review)
   > Do not lose your cool ever
   > Have a crisis management team in place consisting of Legal, HR, Security, etc.
   

4. Step 4: Post crisis
   > Accept that you will never please anyone
   > Review plan and edit where there were issues
   
   
   
   
   

Social Listening

Listening to social chatter online. Reflects badly on company if you ignore the critiques. Even just responding with a link to an FAQs page shows you’re actively listening. Social chatter may also help you find problems you might not have expected and this will give you time to address everything later on before everything blows over and becomes a scandal.

Active social listening helps with:

1. Provide early warning signs

2. Determine state of problem

3. Identify the most appropriate response

4. Spot trends and as such predict crisis

5. Respond quickly and sensitively

6. Start to rebuild or repair
   

Crisis Communication Focus

1. Communicate internally first then externally

2. Anticipate the needs of the media

3. Ensure key messages are clear, consistent and honest

4. Manage perception of competence and reality

5. Correct inaccurate and misleading information quickly

6. Stay in contact with victim’s families

Hire trained communication managers.
Carefully manage access to social media pages.
Requires skills to deal with disgruntled customers, misinformation, libel
When to take information offline