Crisis management: how important is social media in a crisis?
Hi,
Welcome to my #2 blog post! I hope you enjoyed my previous post in which I wrote about creating your brand image and identity through social media. :)
This week, we’ll refer to crisis management. Crisis management is a part of public relations and it’s a process of dealing with some emergency situation. An important part of dealing with the crisis is social media.
Actually, when you think about it, many crises occur because organizations/companies don’t respond to the negative reviews and comments that people leave them on their social media accounts. I certainly think that a marketing team of a corporation thinks that it’s not a big deal when someone writes a rude comment about the products and services the corporation provides, so they do nothing regarding that question. And before they realize, they’re a step forward into downfall.
One good example of how to provide a customer service in an emergency is the situation when Sephora handled a crisis with the singer SZA. In April 2019, SZA tweeted that a Sephora employee called the security on her to stop her from stealing. She gained a lot of support, and people started tweeting how Sephora employees are rude and racist. Then, the official Sephora profile on twitter answered SZA’s tweet, and they let her know they are doing everything they can at the moment in order to clear the situation. A month later, Sephora posted on Facebook that all stores will be closed for an hour, because of a training of diversity. Clearly, SZA’s tweet encouraged whole Sephora’s team to do something about the customer’s service, which was, as we can see, terrible.
Sephora handled this situation pretty well, and they did the crucial things everyone needs to do, in order to get out of a crisis:
1. Value the customers' comment and give them a feedback ASAP,
2. Imply that you’ll fix the situation ASAP;
3. Post about further steps taken in order to improve the customer service and satisfy every individual who comes into the store.
If every brand checked their social media multiple times a day, they would be able to prevent crises. With social media, “The customer is always right” upgraded to a new level. As a customer, if I’m not lazy to criticize a brand, then the brand should not be lazy to respond to me and give me feedback what will they do to improve the things I criticise.
After all, we all just look for some juciy drama on the Internet. And if we can’t find it, we create it ourselves. And companies should be aware of that!
References:
“3 great examples of crisis management on social media” https://prconsultancy.org/3-great-examples-of-crisis-management-on-social-media/
