Author: Jonathan & Erik Bernstein

How do you manage this increasingly common problem?

Despite what quite a few shady companies purport to be able to do, there is no way to magically erase negative online reviews. The reality is that if people are saying bad things about you online, the best thing you can do is change their minds

If you run an organization that deals with the public, chances are that you’ve already encountered a crisis management scenario involving negative online reviews. Whether it’s blog dedicated to documenting your failures or an angry ex-customer who’s made it their business to tell everyone on Twitter how much you suck (no offense, they said it!). The fact that someone headed home and decided to dedicate a chunk of time to digging into your organization’s reputation will factor into the decision-making process of other potential customers.

With surveys showing that nearly 74% of consumers are conducting online research before making purchase decisions, you literally can not afford to have those negative reviews popping up prominently in search results.

What’s the first step, then? Actually, much like any good crisis management plan, this one starts before a crisis ever pops up. Make it very clear how people can contact you if they have complaints, questions or concerns, and actually RESPOND to their inquiries. If every organization actively manned their customer service phone lines and email accounts you’d see a lot less complaints making their way into the public arena.

Next up, fully investigate the complaint and if you find an issue, FIX the problem! Yes, there are those random trolls that put up bad reviews for no reason, but it’s far more likely that something you or your employees did has set someone off. Before you go any further, do a thorough, honest audit and be certain that your organizations is up to par in terms of operations, customer service, product quality, whatever the complaint was about.

Sure you’ve got everything straight at home? The next step is to get in touch with the upset parties. Approach them privately, if possible, with a compassionate stance and ask if they’ll give you another shot and write a followup review. It sounds so simple that many dismiss the idea, but in our experience this is the #1 way to remove negative search results online while demonstrating to potential future customers just how helpful and awesome your company really is.

Remember, everyone makes mistakes, and the public is more willing than to accept that fact than most expect. What they’re less willing to accept is someone who encounters a problem and does nothing about it.

Does an online reputation management problem still have you stymied? Go back that rule that solves so very many problems – The Golden Rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated, and your reputation will prosper.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Foot-in-mouth disease continues to affect organizations and individuals worldwide

Each year around this time Merrie Spaeth, former Director of Media Relations for President Reagan and current president of Spaeth Communications, announces her BIMBO of the Year awards. The BIMBO awards are meant to demonstrate the dangers of associating oneself with the very negative terms you seek to avoid. After reading this year’s winner and (dis)-honorable mentions, you’ll see how using the wrong terms can cause the listener to believe precisely the opposite of what you intended to say.

The 2012 Bimbo Of The Year Award Winner…

“The world will not end on December 21, 2012, or any day in 2012,” read a post on USA.gov. Titled “Scary rumors about the world ending in 2012 are just rumors,” the website tried to debunk end-of the-world rumors and allay fears of an impending apocalypse predicted by the Mayan calendar. (A classic BIMBO causes the listener to believe the opposite of what the speaker is trying to say. In this case, the blog only reinforces fears about the predicted doomsday. This post can’t be helping NASA, which has already received messages from young people who say “they are ill and/or contemplating suicide because of the coming doomsday.”)

USA.gov, “Scary rumors about the world ending in 2012 are just rumors,” Dec. 3, 2012

http://blog.usa.gov/post/37121041300/scary-rumors-about-the-world-ending-in-2012-are-just

DISHONORABLE MENTIONS

“I don’t think there is some drastic change needed,” said RIM CEO Thorsten Heins as shareholders called for change after the latest Blackberry model was criticized for lack of apps and other features. Mr. Heins made another appearance in the Memo this year claiming, “This company is not ignoring the world out there, nor is it in a death spiral.” (Mr. Heins gets the dishonorable mention for his repeated use of classic BIMBO comments. He should know better.)

The Guardian, “RIM chief denies Blackberry maker is in a ‘death spiral,’” July 3, 2012

Bloomberg Businessweek, “Research in Motion: The Living Dead?” Feb. 5, 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jul/03/rim-chief-blackberry-death-spiral

“We’re not strippers, we’re maids,” said Melissa Borrett, founder of Lubbock, Texas-based Fantasy Maid Services whose maids clean houses nude. She added, “The nudity aspect of it isn’t, in and of itself, enough to qualify it as a nude cleaning service.”

Lubbock Avalanche Journal, “Nude maid service not sexual, owner says,” April 10, 2012

 

 

 

 

 

http://lubbockonline.com/local-news/2012-04-10/nude-maid-service-not-sexual-owner-says

Interested in more BIMBOs? You can catch all of Merrie’s 2012 nominees at the Spaeth Communications website.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Crisis management for a clash of modern vs. traditional communication

While the rest of the business world has boarded the social media train, an incident earlier this month involving Netflix CEO Reed Hastings brought to light an important question: How do you avoid having your social media communications run afoul of regulatory bodies that are behind the times?

Here’s a rundown of the situation, from a Reuters article by Ronald Grover and Sue Zeidler:

Hastings wrote in the post on the company’s public Facebook page on July 3: “Netflix monthly viewing exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time ever in June.” The post was accessible to the more than 244,000 subscribers to the page.

Netflix received what is known as a Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which means the SEC staff will recommend the full commission pursue either a cease-and-desist action and/or a civil injunction against Netflix and Hastings over the alleged violation.

Netflix may have run afoul of the SEC’s Regulation FD, adopted in 2000, which requires public companies to make full and fair public disclosure of material non-public information.

 

 

“We think posting to over 200,000 people is very public, especially because many of my subscribers are reporters and bloggers,” Hastings said on Thursday in a letter. He also said that he did not believe the Facebook posting was “material” information.

You would be hard pressed to find many who would deem a post on a major organization’s Facebook page to be anything less than “fair public disclosure” but apparently the SEC employs at least a few that don’t feel the same way.

Hasting’s initial response was pretty much on track, although we would have recommended padding it a bit by paying some respect to the efforts of the SEC, and he certainly has the court of public opinion on his side by dint of sheer popularity – both of Netflix and social media – but other organizations may not find themselves in such an advantageous position when facing down regulators.

So, what can you do to mitigate the impact of a similar situation?

As we’re so fond of saying, the best form of crisis management is crisis prevention, and you’ll limit the potential for damage simply by being prepared. Get your legal and social media teams together and hammer out the details of a communication plan. Social media can state what they intend to share, and legal can then draw parallels from traditional, approved communication methods (and by reaching out to critical stakeholders like the SEC) so that there is documented proof that your organization made every effort to comply. Keep these two in close communication and even if trouble does manage to sneak in, you should be able to thwart it with little harm to reputation or the bottom line.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Has the onetime industry leader completely stopped caring?

Black Friday presents a great opportunity to grab new customers or bring old ones back with exciting deals. As with many opportunities, this one can also be a double-edged sword, as failure to meet expectations can lead to serious crisis management concerns. For example, Dell Computers, whose bottom line is already hurting due to the trend towards tablets and more capable smartphones, created a major reputation crisis for itself when it pulled an (allegedly) unintentional bait and switch on excited shoppers.

Here are more details, from a Huffington Post article by Catherine New:

The Austin-based PC-maker oversold its widely promoted “doorbuster” laptop deal — a 14-inch Inspiron 14z marked down to $299 from $599. Now, instead of canceling or delaying orders, Dell is trying to pass on a different, bigger model to customers.

 

In nearly two dozen emails to The Huffington Post on Wednesday, some anguished customers said Dell’s delayed and minimal response to the issue prevented them from scooping up other laptop deals. Some reported losing out on cash-back deals with their credit cards after Dell switched their orders. Other customers agonized that the confusion and time spent trying to sort out their order has meant lost quality time with loved ones over the holiday.

If you’d like a glimpse of the type of negative sentiment that Dell brought out in its customer base, just have a quick look at the comments on Catherine’s HuffPost article. Suffice to say, people were extremely upset and felt, understandably, that they had been duped into buying an inferior laptop by the promise of an amazing Black Friday deal, especially because it took Dell almost three full days to notify customers of the problem – a move that many felt was designed to have them miss out on other sales.

So where’s the apology from Dell? The promise to honor all purchases, even if some must be delayed? Well, apparently it’s not coming. Dell simply shrugged and blamed computer problems while bringing on extra customer service reps to handle phone lines overloaded with customers futilely trying to get the product they ordered.

The bottom line here is that if Dell can’t even be bothered to care about its own reputation, then losing market share to handheld devices is the least of its concerns. The company needs a change of corporate culture, and fast.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Potential disaster headed off by strong crisis communication

Ethical reporting has been a hot topic recently, and this quote, from a PRDaily article by Gil Rudawsky, describes a perfect case study for media organizations to preserve a paper’s reputation and come to the unfortunate realization that one of their writers or reporters has been less than honest. When The Cape Cod Times discovered that reporter Karen Jeffrey had made a habit of fabricating sources, they made the difficult decision to print the whole story in what we say was a brilliant crisis management move.

The Cape Cod Times covered the news like it would any other breach of ethics. In a 1,024-word apology to readers, editor Paul Pronovost and publisher Peter Meyer (in a bylined story) offered a complete look at how they found out about the fabrications—including examples of her fabricated sources—while trying to explain how it happened. They noted that the reporter no longer works for the paper.

“How did this happen? Or more important, how did we allow this to happen?” Pronovost and Meyer wrote. “It’s a question we cannot satisfactorily answer. Clearly we placed too much trust in a reporter and did not verify sourcing with necessary frequency.”

Taking a page from classic crisis communication strategy, they offered a personal apology without making any excuses and holding themselves to the same scrutiny as the paper does other members of the public:
“This column is our first step toward addressing what we uncovered. We needed to share these details, as uncomfortable as they are, because we are more than a private company dealing with a personnel issue—we are a newspaper and we have broken our trust with you. We deeply regret this happened and extend our personal apology to you.”

The reporter in question was found to have been inventing sources dating back to some point in the 1990’s, with Cape Cod Times editors admitting that they have been unable to locate at least 69 “sources” used in 34 stories, and they aren’t even looking at dates prior to 1990, when the paper’s articles began to be digitized. While many organizations’ first instinct upon discovering an inside problem is to bury it, The Cape Cod Times was able to both honor the journalistic ethics code and turn what could have been a seriously damaging discovery into a way to elevate its status as a trusted source among readers. By essentially telling readers that they knew they’d messed up and were awfully embarrassed about it, the paper positioned itself as well-intentioned and honest in the court of public opinion.

No matter what your organization does, when you find a problem the very last thing you want to do is bury it. If you behave dishonestly then (and this may come as a shock to some people out there!) you are dishonest, and that stigma will follow you regardless of what colorful story you piece together to explain your actions. Stakeholders can accept that you made a mistake, especially if you put a human face to your admission as The Cape Cod Times did with its editor and publisher, but they are much less understanding when they find that they’ve been deliberately duped. It may be more difficult in the short term, but, and we’re speaking from experience, the end result will be much more positive.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Thoughtless Twitter posts lead to rapid ejection from mediator role

It’s common to see Twitter profiles including comments like “opinions are my own and do not represent those of my employer,” but the fact is that whether you post a qualification or not, the things you do and say online can definitely have an impact on your professional career.

Look no further than Guy Serota. Guy has been a member of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service for fifteen years, and helped to end the 2004 NHL lockout, so it was an easy decision to bring him back to mediate this year’s lockout negotiations. The difference between today and 2004, however, is that in 2012, when you’re publicly appointed to a position of interest, those interested parties are going to dig up every bit of information that they can possibly find and share it with the world.

Unfortunately for Serota, he hasn’t been the nicest “guy” on Twitter (sorry folks, couldn’t resist that one!), and it was only minutes before hockey-starved fans began lining up to make cracks at the oddball mix of comments on his feed that included nasty racial remarks directed at Sarah Silverman, a masturbation reference, partisan political comments and prevalent use of the term “ass mode.”

In a hamfisted attempt at crisis management, Serota did shutter his Twitter account, only to bring it back up and post claiming that he had been hacked, but a web-savvy public found the idea of an undetected hack spanning several weeks and with no apparent focus to be a dubious explanation at best. Much of the offending material has now been deleted, but Serota’s words have been chronicled by countless sites and columnists across the ‘net. It took us about ten seconds to find a whole series of images depicting his reputation-damaging Twitter history.

Of course, all the hubbub also attracted the attention of both the NHL and the FMCS, and within the hour the following statement was released:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director George H. Cohen has issued a follow-up statement today regarding a mediator assigned to the ongoing labor negotiations between the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players’ Association:

 

“Within one hour after I issued a press release announcing that further negotiations between the NHL and NHLPA would be conducted under the auspices of the FMCS, it has been called to my attention that there are issues involving an allegedly hacked Twitter account associated with Commissioner Guy Serota, one of the mediators I assigned. Accordingly, in order to immediately dispel any cloud on the mediation process, and without regard to the merits of the allegations, I have determined to take immediate action, namely to remove Commissioner Serota from this assignment.”

 

“There will be no further comment from the FMCS on this matter.”

What’s the point of all this?

Image is everything.

Do Serota’s personal views or potty mouth have anything to do with his ability as a moderator? Not at all. Does the fact that the public now believes him to be a loose cannon who makes poor decisions? You betcha. Not only that, but he also embarrassed his employer simply by association, and frankly once you do that most organizations will do anything they can to pull you out of the public eye, if not cut ties altogether.

In 2012, and surely moving into the future, putting something on social media is taken the same as if you stood up in the office and shouted it out loud. THINK before you post, it’s basic reputation management.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Reputation management is key in sensitive situations

Jill Kelley, the unofficial social liason to MacDill Air Force Base, is at the very center of the David Petraeus scandal. It was Kelley’s complaints to the FBI about threatening letters from Paula Broadwell that initially started the investigation into the situation, and now that the proverbial stuff has hit the fan Bernstein Crisis Management president Jonathan Bernstein recommends that both her and her socialite sister inject a heavy dose of caution into everything they do or say.

A quote, from a USNews.com article by Elizabeth Flock:

Bernstein, who wrote the Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay says it’s “going to take a long time to sort out who actually did wrong” beyond Gen. Petraeus and Broadwell. Kelley and her sister, he says, need to remember that if they do anything to obfuscate the truth about themselves or the situation, the public will “interpret it as a lie.”

Kelley is said to be gathering a heavy-hitting legal and crisis management team, but if the sisters cause themselves to be found guilty in the court of public opinion it’s likely that no amount of lawyering will prevent them from negative consequences.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Helping New York weather the storm

New Yorkers are no strangers to crisis, but Hurricane Sandy truly put the city’s crisis management skills to the test. Mayor Michael Bloomberg was at the helm, and faced close scrutiny regarding his handling of the entire situation.

The verdict? The veteran mayor turned in a powerful performance, navigating the perils of crisis communication and disaster management with confidence. In an interview with The Financialist, Bernstein Crisis Management president Jonathan Bernstein shared his thoughts on one of the reasons Bloomberg’s crisis management was so successful:

“There is no city in the country that has had as much practice as New York in crisis management,” says Bernstein. “Those speaking for the City of New York, and certainly Mayor Bloomberg, had a good plan in place which they began implementing well in advance of the storm.”

The old adage “practice makes perfect” applies, well, perfectly, to crisis management. Of course, it’s much less strenuous to hone your crisis management skills in simulations and training exercises than in the midst of a major incident; that’s why smart organizations, from city governments to retail chains, devote time and resources to regular practice – ironing out the kinks and confusion before it really counts.

You can’t prevent every crisis, but with the right mix of preparation, action and communication you can certainly mitigate their effects. Well done Mayor Bloomberg.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Compassionate and conscientious email staves off reputation crisis

In a recent article on the Bernstein Crisis Management blog, we discussed a crisis management email from Twitter that was missing a core component – compassion. Now, we’d like to show you an example of a company absolutely nailing it that was brought to our attention by friend and colleague Bruce Bonafede.

Here’s the email that went out to members of Yahoo! Sports’ Fantasy Football league following a Sunday outage – the absolute worst day of the week for their system to crash:

Dear Yahoo! Fantasy Users,

As I mentioned in my earlier email, Yahoo! works hard to provide great experiences for our users every day. For you, we understand that Fantasy is a core part of your daily routine during this time of year. On Sunday we experienced technical issues which caused the Fantasy experience to be inaccessible. We’re sorry. Our entire team worked tirelessly to re-establish the service – however, we had a significant outage. We know this created inconvenience and frustration for millions of our fans, and we feel we owe you an explanation.

So what happened? At Yahoo!, we have giant machines called “filers” that process a lot of the real-time data and stats for us and for you. We do millions of calculations every hour for our games, and normally our machines can handle this with no problem. Recently, we discovered a hardware issue in one of the filers that caused the other one to overload. We replaced some hardware, re-configured the setup, and did some testing. However this Sunday – at approximately 12:15 p.m. Eastern – the new configuration failed. This created an overload on storage capacity and took the Fantasy part of our site down.

We had dozens of engineers from various teams working together to try to determine the cause and fix it. One option was to fall back on another data center, but that would have meant shutting the game down and losing scoring data. We wanted to avoid that at all costs. Ultimately, we were able to move our mobile apps to a back-up data center, free up storage to get the PC version of the game working, and get the mobile apps up in a “read-only” state – meaning you could see scores and data, but you still couldn’t set lineups and interact.

We spent Sunday night and most of Monday looking at dozens of potential causes. Monday afternoon, we stress-tested our system. Everything seemed to be in working order, so we turned on all our mobile app functions in time for Monday Night Football. Everything performed as expected and continues to do so. We’ll have all hands on deck this coming Sunday to closely monitor performance and ensure we can respond quickly in case of any abnormal activity.

We know many of you have questions about your leagues and games, so we’ve also set up a FAQ here that will explain how we are going to handle various scenarios.

Finally, we know we failed you this weekend, and there’s no way to fix that. As a token of our appreciation for your patience and continued support, we wanted to give something back. First, we’re offering a complimentary football weekly Scouting Report for the remainder of the year. Hopefully this will help you down the stretch. The report includes weekly expert analysis, rankings and news to help you make smart decisions. Second, we are offering all our users a 20% discount for the rest the year at the Yahoo! Sports Store.

For any updates, we will keep you informed on @YahooSports and facebook.com/yahoosports.

We won’t stop working to provide you with new and improved features that help you enjoy your Sundays.

Thanks again for playing and for your patience.

Best,

Ken Fuchs
Head of Yahoo! Sports

Prompt, compassionate, honest, informative and interactive. Yahoo! checked off on every one of the Five Tenets of Crisis Communications and it shows in the quality and effect of the email.

Kudos Yahoo!, excellent crisis management!

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Automaker continues its crisis management mishaps

Yes, Toyota really is in the process of yet another major recall. Although it looks like the company may be learning from previous crisis management (no injuries or accidents related to this one), the fact that it’s recalling hundreds of thousands of cars every few months constantly threatens to turn consumer’s favor.

Here’s the story, from a USA Today article by James Healey:

Toyota’s own faulty specifications led to Wednesday’s recall of 670,000 older Prius hybrids in the U.S. for potentially defective steering, the automaker acknowledges.

And about 350,000 of those same Priuses also were recalled Wednesday for water pumps that could cause the cars to stall.

The steering problem “is a design-related issue — insufficient hardness on the specification,” says Brian Lyons, Toyota’s spokesman for safety issues in the U.S.

 

 

The two U.S. recalls are part of larger global actions for these problems that cover nearly 2.8 million vehicles of various models.

Toyota, while still hanging surprisingly well with its less-beleaguered competition, is no longer ruling the U.S. auto market, with that honor going to General Motors as of last month.

It’s important for brands to avoid being associated with negative terms but, at this point, Toyota’s name – at least in the States – is at serious risk of becoming synonymous with recalls. Just think about how many times you’ve seen the two sharing a headline over the past few years – probably more times than not, right?

Toyota may still be bringing in money, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the company is more concerned about saving cash in the short term than ironing out all of the dangerous kinks in its system. Consider the fact that today’s consumers are more educated and savvy than ever before, and it’s only a matter of time before the general public chooses to take its money to a company that walks its talk.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]