182. How do you manage your business in a crisis?
What should you do in a brand crisis? 🫠 It all comes down to preparation. In this episode of Brand Therapy, hosts Phil and Lauren share recommendations for all things reputation management. You’ll learn how to anticipate issues, draft effective responses, create a detractor tier system, and other tricks of the trade. If you’ve ever been worried about getting bad press from a disgruntled customer, this is the episode for you.
Episode transcription
Phil
Hello there. Welcome. This is Brand Therapy. We're glad you're here. What are we talking about today? Miss Moore?
Lauren
Wow, I haven't heard that nickname before.
Phil
I've got to come up with something new.
Lauren
Creativity is the name of the game here at Brand Therapy. Today we're talking about something kind of serious.
Phil
Actually we are. So get your laughters out now because there's nothing funny for the rest of this episode.
Lauren
The time for giggles is behind us. We're talking about how to manage your brand and a crisis. Yeah, serious and important, really serious. But we'll make it as fun as we can given the heaviness of the topic, but I'll give some background. So before I joined Phil Pallen Collective full time, I had another life.
I was working at a big agency, and I was in charge of the social media for a gigantic veterinary corporation that's worth $2 billion. I don't think I can say the name of it on this call, because I was dealing with the legal department a lot. Was I qualified? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But somehow I just got thrown into the deep end of reputation management. And I learned a lot along the way. And so I'm going to share that today because I think that even if you're a small business, sometimes you have to think of worst case scenario so you're equipped with the tools to deal with it properly. And quickly, if that ever comes to fruition.
Phil
This came up recently on a client call, which prompted me to go ooh, this would make a good podcast episode. There's also been instances in years previous, where we've been working with a client, let's say on a branding project or a website and all of a sudden, something happens, a situation out of their control happens. And they trust us at that moment to be like, guys, what do I do in this moment? How do I handle this serious situation. And I don't have to do anything in these situations, because I have Miss Moore to come in and help. Because it really is quite wild. I think Lauren, in this job, you became used to the crazy day to day, but it's actually fascinating. The systems and almost like the plan that you've created for people in a time of crisis. So that's what we're doing today how to manage your brand.
Lauren
Yes. So I'm going to first give a little context and the lay of the land on the experience that I am approaching reputation management problems with. And then we can think about how you can tailor this for your own brands needs. But basically, this particular client account that I was put in charge of had at the time, over 800 locations across America. It was gigantic. There were literally over 800 Facebook pages like it was, again, I have no idea how I got this responsibility. But I guess I'll never know, it was a really great experience. And so my job was to monitor, in addition to creating and leading their social media strategy, half of my job was keeping an eye on and monitoring the pulse of complaints online. And this would be in Google reviews, this would be on Facebook pages, this would be on Twitter and this would also be on Yelp. And so we had this big system that basically would email me every time anyone left a review on any of the 800 hospitals and on any of those different platforms. And I would need to go through them and basically decide what was potentially going to escalate in terms of negative press, or losing a customer or any, like an actual physical threat to the location and then decide how to handle it.
So generally, I would say that you want to first create a rubric to anticipate what possible categories of complaints are going to be. So in this case, there would be complaints ranging from the waiting room was so busy, I couldn't think there was someone making a really loud noise and no one said anything, all the way to my dog came in for a routine procedure and he died on the table because your veterinarian did something wrong. You know, it's a real pendulum of risk here. And so I kind of made a huge brainstorm of what the different types of complaints could be, and just in general categories. So if someone's complaining about wait times, like you don't need to anticipate every single potential complaint of wait times you just need like a general like bucket for wait times another one for maybe like how someone was treated like maybe they felt like they weren't treated with respect another one about how like, you know, there was an actual, like something done medically wrong to the pet, like, you basically want to just come up with those categories. And then you want to be planning out just general responses that are pre planned to whatever complaint is in that category.
Phil
I never thought of it this way, the idea of a rubric is fascinating.
Lauren
Yeah, well, the thing is, is that it's a lot easier to revise something that's already been drafted than to come up with something from scratch.
Phil
And so think about, it's almost like creating the rubric. It's like the exercise of creating it is almost more important than the physical rubric that you would hold in your hand. It's more like this as an exercise and just imagining every worst case scenario and how we'd handle it. Because even if something else happens, you didn't think of you still have a scenario that might be similar that you can use.
Lauren
Absolutely. And so this can also be applied to anyone who's, you know, doesn't have a brick and mortar business, but has an online business. So for us Phil, the complaints could be anywhere from and for listeners to hear we never get complaints about the work that we do.
Phil
No, it doesn't. But you never know, it could happen.
LaUREN
So a complaint to us, like a general complaint might be, you take a long time to reply to my emails, or you don't have enough availability for calls.
Phil
Yeah, we get that that's true. Yeah.
Lauren
All the way to, I am completely dissatisfied with the work that you did. And I want all of my money back, that has never happened before. But that's probably I'd say like the most severe complaint that we could get in our line of work.
Phil
I would say so.
Lauren
And so again, want to map out those different categories. And the categories will be like how you meet someone feel related to wait times, and then the like, get more and more severe up that rubric scale, then you want to basically draft a custom response that can address that person's complaint as quick as possible. So I this was back in like 2013, the stats were something like if someone complains online, they expect a response within three hours. That's the expectation. I am sure today, it's probably like, way faster the expectation. And so again, that's why having that rough draft of your response ready to go that you can slightly adapt is so critical, because you realistically your reputation is not going to allow for you to take an hour or two to write something from scratch. So that's just another thing to consider is the quicker that you can get back to someone about their complaint, the quicker that the whole situation will diffuse.
When you're writing your responses, people hate canned responses, particularly if it's like online. So if someone's complaining on your Yelp, or if someone's complaining on your Facebook post, or Instagram post or whatever, literally, it is like a kiss of death, reputation wise if you just copy and paste a clearly canned response. And it's not just a kiss of death between you and the person who left the first negative response. It's actually really detrimental for anyone else online who sees this interaction between you and whoever's complaining.
Phil
Good point,
Lauren
If someone's going to be giving you their business, they want to know that if something goes wrong, you're not just going to be copying and pasting, you're going to treat them like a human being who has like a unique complaint and like a valid need that requires something a little custom.
Try to start off your response with like, hi, and then say their first name because people love hearing their names. So like doing like, hello, customer that is like not good. That's not good. You want to go Hi, David, you always want to start off with a thank you. Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. And then you want to reiterate with something that talks about your company values. So if someone was complaining about wait times you would do like, Hi, David, thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. It's important that everyone who walks through our doors feels celebrated and feels cared for when they enter our establishment, but seems like you didn't get that experience during your visit. Notice how we aren't saying sorry, because sorry, from a legal perspective actually admits fault. So just saying it's important to us that bla bla bla bla, and it seems like you didn't feel you got that.
Phil
Wow, nuance. It's so important, though. It's wild the difference in the moment, you might not think about the significance of the difference between just saying sorry, and saying how you've worded that perfectly. Can you repeat it again, how you would phrase this?
Lauren
So hi, David, thanks so much for bringing this to our attention. It's important that everyone who walks through our doors feels cared for the moment they step in. It seems like you did not get that experience during your visit.
Phil
Oh my lord, write that down people. Also, we've got a blog post on this. And we've got shownotes. So you're covered. But yes, wow.
Lauren
And then to cap out, you don't want to be doing paragraphs and paragraphs of their specific situation for a variety of reasons, your primary goal is to take the conversation offline as soon as you can. Because remember, even if you're direct messaging with someone or emailing with someone, they can take screenshots and post it everywhere. So nothing is really private. You want to get them on the phone, if you can. That's generally the best way to like defuse the situation.
So if you know who it is, and you have their contact information, you want to try reaching out to them and then actually put in your reply, we tried reaching out to you on your cell phone, please call us back, when you have a moment we look forward to connecting with you. If you don't have their information, then you can say we'd love to discuss this further with you so we can figure out how to make things right. Can you please DM us with the best contact information to get in touch.
Phil
Make things right.
Lauren
But again, when you say make things right, you're not admitting a fault. Yeah, you're not saying we did things wrong? Make things right wants nuance nuance. Okay, so we're good on the rubric, right?
Phil
Yep, we're good.
Lauren
Okay. Now, if you work in a company where there are potential, like legal issues or risks at hand, you're gonna want to take your rubric and basically divide every category into two different tiers. Tier one are minor complaints, maybe the person won't come back. But it's like minor stuff. Tier two is high stakes. In the case of the work that I used to do, my pet died, and I want to burn your office down to the ground or your business could be at risk. If someone went to the press, it could decimate you and really, really negatively affect your reputation. So you want to have basically a system for when there's a tier one complaint versus a tier two complaint. Tier two complaint is something where legal might want to be involved. So if you have a lawyer, and you're sending your reply, that would be a good moment for you to just send a screenshot to your lawyer of what's going on. And just say like, FYI, I don't know if this is going to escalate but in case it does, I just want you to be in the know about this in case we need to act fast. So that's all you need to do.
If you work within an organization or a hospital or anything that has like an opera, like corporate office or whatever, you want to make sure that you have a system in place for when it's appropriate to actually stop replying to the person and when legal should get involved. So you'd need to work that out internally, about, you know, when that would happen. Now, the final thing that I'll say about this is that your instinct might be to block someone online, and I do not recommend blocking someone if you can help it. Do you want a little story about this Phil?
Phil
Tell us why because my instinctwould be absolutely block someone get them out of my life. I don't want to hear from you.
Lauren
So one time this happened, they were very understandably upset, their pet went in for a routine procedure and ended up dying because they accidentally punctured the pets lung on the table. Horrible, right? Any reasonable person would be really upset about that. The person however, was threatening to physically harm the doctor threatening to expose the person to go to their house and threatening again to burn the hospital down to the ground, threatening to go to the media and typing about 10 super, super aggressive messages on their Facebook page in all caps. And that person just couldn't be reasoned with and the messages just kept coming and coming and coming. We replied the person at the hospital, tried getting in contact with them. He wouldn't answer his phone. He was really, really out of control. And so it wasn't my call, but someone said I think we just need to block them and let this fizzle out. I said like, No, I don't think we should block them. But the decision was made to block this person. We ended up blocking them and then like a game of Whack a Mole this person started creating multiple fake accounts and then posting from all the fake accounts and every time a fake account would be blocked, they would just create more and more fake accounts and it ended up snowballing even more.
Phil
So don't block on Facebook on Instagram you might want to consider like, you can hide ads that you don't want to see but no you can't. To hide the comments, you can't, well, you can turn commenting off on a post, but that's universal.
Lauren
So I would say if you're dealing with someone who's really, really losing it, turn the comments off temporarily.
Phil
And we're using Instagram as an example in this case, but imagine on Facebook and on YouTube, Facebook, you can hide.
Lauren
Yeah, Facebook, you can hide. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I would say, until you speak with the person, I would just hide, I would hide and turn off your comments. Personally. These are my recommendations on what to do in a crisis.
Phil
They are good recommendations. We have our show notes if you want to prefer to look at this, you can on our website. We've also drafted a longer form blog post that has even more juicy info and recommendations on how to handle your brand in a crisis. Thank you for taking us down memory lane Lauren. I mean, Miss Moore. Hopefully it wasn't too traumatic going back to those days. But you do give good advice on this. And that's why we had a podcast episode out of it.
Lauren
Awesome. I'm glad it was helpful. Hopefully no one has to do this. Hopefully there are no crisis.
Phil
But if they ever find themselves in this situation, which can happen to any business owner now, hopefully you feel a little more prepared. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you take a few extra seconds to leave us a review that helps other people discover this podcast that we work hard to create five star, five star and I did that out of order as I usually do, but that's okay. And we'll be back next week with a brand new episode, new discussion that I think you're gonna live. We'll see you then.
Lauren
Bye bye.
