Category: Organization Development

Don’t say one thing to your customers while you’re telling shareholders another…

Target’s massive data breach last year, in which some 70 million pieces of customer data, including names, addresses, and credit card numbers, were stolen by hackers, shook shopper’s confidence and created lower-than-predicted sales during the crucial holiday season. Although the company faced some initial stumbles, its crisis management, including messaging regarding the situation and steps taken sent directly to affected customers and placed in stores, seems to be turning things around.

That is, of course, unless the retailer does something stupid. Something like, ohhh…informing the Securities and Exchange Commission that “it is possible that we will identify additional information that was accessed or stolen, which could materially worsen the losses and reputational damage we have experienced” while they’re busy reassuring the public that the trouble’s past.

Oh, that just happened in Target’s annual 10-k report? Well bollocks.

The instinct to start shouting from the rooftops that you’re past a crisis as soon as possible is completely understandable, but if you stop and think, what really looks worse – saying you’re in the clear and then having to announce you were wrong, or keeping everyone informed as you work through an issue until it’s really and truly resolved?

Target’s drawing shoppers back in, but if the problem is discovered to be bigger than reported you can bet the news won’t be tucked away in a SEC filing, and you can doubly bet that those customers who just barely put their shaken confidence back in the Target brand will be taking their money elsewhere.

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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]

The way you handle stakeholders can make fans for life…or create crisis

We focus a lot on preventing crisis stemming from those outside our organizations via social media, and for good reason, but it’s important to remember that issues involving employee interactions are one of the most common causes leading to a need for more serious crisis management.

In an eHotelier.com article, Daniel Edward Craig shared this wisdom on preventing social media crisis from within:

Businesses are well aware of the perils of external attacks, but often the real threat comes from within. We have never been more vulnerable to errors and misjudgment on the part of employees.

As an example, in 2012 a major international hotel brand was assailed on social networks after a front desk employee allegedly mocked a disabled U.S. army veteran who requested assistance during a power outage. He got down from his room by throwing his wheelchair and suitcases down three flights of stairs and sliding down on his behind. Then he went straight to the media.

Staff must understand that social media has raised the stakes. The costs of mistreating customers are significantly higher. Employees and managers must be trained and empowered to identify and resolve issues onsite before they escalate to online channels.

Not that it was a good idea to mistreat customers before, but frankly it was possible for members of your organization to have the occasional ugly run-in and get away with it. Now, between social media and the ever-present smartphone, any such incidents are likely to be recorded, documented, and immediately shared with a massive network full of potential stakeholders.

It’s not that the customer must always be right, but the consequences for slips in behavior have been magnified to a point where a single mistake holds the very real potential to permanently damage your business.

How do you prevent such mistakes? The best way is to create crisis management plans that include clear instructions on how disgruntled stakeholders are to be handled, and then train employees on tactics they can employ when it comes to both agreeing and disagreeing with the opinions or demands of said stakeholders.

Nobody’s going to force you to do it, but unless you’d like to provide some nice fodder for this blog we’d suggest you get on the ball.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

What you say is only part of what your audience takes away from any communication

Body language speaks volumes to whoever you’re addressing, making careful consideration of the impression you’re giving a critical crisis management concern.

While the infographic below, from, of all people, language experts at Gengo, addresses more than just crisis situations, the lessons it holds regarding the most effective behavior when addressing various audiences is spot on and sure to help you the next time you’re responsible for handling crisis communications:

Don’t think you’re ready for the cameras to roll just because you’ve gone over a couple how-to’s though! Control of your body language and facial expressions, not to mention the tone and content coming out of your mouth, takes practice, practice practice. Get in front of that camera, mirror, or a trusted colleague and grind until you’ve got it down pat. That’s the only way to nail down the right approach to any communication situation.

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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]

As with any endeavor, preparation greatly increases your chances of success

Can you imagine a squad of firefighters deciding to throw out their plans and training “just wing it” when they head into a burning building?

The idea is ridiculous of course, but why are so many who would scoff at that willing to charge into crisis headfirst without any sort of game plan in place?

Former EBay COO and current Yahoo! Chairman Maynard Webb is no stranger to crisis management, and in a Linkedin blog post he explained precisely what every organization SHOULD be doing to prepare for when a crisis hits:

Ideally, you want to be deploying a playbook rather than developing a playbook. Most often, people don’t do this in advance and then have to develop processes while in battle — that’s much harder. At eBay, when we learned that hours after 9/11 people were putting debris from the World Trade Center for sale on the site…we knew how to respond immediately because we had a policy in place that detailed that we would not profit from disaster. Because of this, we were able to respond immediately and take it down.

Most likely, EBay’s playbook for incidents involving users selling items related to disasters was something like a few lines of text in the Terms of Service and a canned message that was delivered to anyone posting such items.

It sounds simple, but without the advance crisis management work of creating a rule explicitly against profiting from disaster and a way to respond should such a situation arise, EBay could have become the center of a reputation-damaging controversy.

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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]

The Obama Administration’s Social Innovation Fund (SIF) has now been in operation for several years. SIF was created to fund an annual competition to identify innovative nonprofit programs that provide measurable, scalable solutions to community problems. Continue reading “Update: Obama’s Social Innovation Fund”

Your social media presence is a valuable commodity, don’t leave it unguarded

We’re at the point where some social media accounts are worth serious dough. Some for the rich communities built around them, some for their brand association, and some simply because they have a unique, hard-to-obtain handle. Because of that, just as we saw in the days when the ‘net in general was really starting to take off, there are virtual pirates looking to take what’s yours and either make it their own or hold it for ransom.

A warning for security slackers

The story of app developer Naoki Hiroshima, owner of the Twitter username, @N, should serve as motivation for anyone who’s slacking on their own web security – a critical part of personal crisis management in the digital age. Hiroshima owned the @N account, for which he says he’s been offered as much as $50,000, when a hacker decided to take it for himself. Hiroshima says he began receiving account reset emails from both PayPal and GoDaddy, and through a serious of events detailed in his Medium blog, lost control of the GoDaddy account altogether.

In a scary twist, Hiroshima was actually emailed by his attacker, who extorted him into giving up control of the @N Twitter account by threatening to trash the data on the websites which he runs, all registered through GoDaddy. Hiroshima even managed to get directly connected with a GoDaddy exec at some point in the process, but they were unable to help secure his accounts before he felt forced to give up @N.

Even worse, the hacker provided Hiroshima with information about how he took over control of much of his digital life, and, if he’s telling the truth, PayPal and GoDaddy failed miserably in protecting a customer’s data. A quote:

I asked the attacker how my GoDaddy account was compromised and received this response:

From: <swiped@live.com> SOCIAL MEDIA KING
To: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 19:53:52 -0800
Subject: RE: …hello

– I called paypal and used some very simple engineering tactics to obtain the last four of your card (avoid this by calling paypal and asking the agent to add a note to your account to not release any details via phone)

– I called godaddy and told them I had lost the card but I remembered the last four, the agent then allowed me to try a range of numbers (00-09 in your case) I have not found a way to heighten godaddy account security, however if you’d like me to
recommend a more secure registrar i recommend: NameCheap or eNom (not network solutions but enom.com)

It’s hard to decide what’s more shocking, the fact that PayPal gave the attacker the last four digits of my credit card number over the phone, or that GoDaddy accepted it as verification. When asked about this, the attacker responded with this message:

From: <swiped@live.com> SOCIAL MEDIA KING
To: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 20:00:31 -0800
Subject: RE: …hello

Yes paypal told me them over the phone (I was acting as an employee) and godaddy let me “guess” for the first two digits of the card

But guessing 2 digits correctly isn’t that easy, right?

From: <swiped@live.com> SOCIAL MEDIA KING
To: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 20:09:21 -0800
Subject: RE: …hello

I got it in the first call, most agents will just keep trying until they get it

He was lucky that he only had to guess two numbers and was able to do it in a single call. The thing is, GoDaddy allowed him to keep trying until he nailed it. Insane. Sounds like I was dealing with a wannabe Kevin Mitnick—it’s as though companies have yet to learn from Mitnick’s exploits circa 1995.

The bottom line here is that, although many organizations make a big stink about how secure they keep your data, the vast majority are easy prey for anyone with a bit of “dark side” know-how (how-to instructions for tactics like the ones used in this case are readily available through a quick Google search) and a silver tongue. When it comes to protecting digital assets, always assume the burden of protection lies on you.

A happy ending, but not so fast…

There is a happy ending to Hiroshima’s story, as, likely thanks to the massive amount of publicity his blog post on the hack attracted, he regained control of the @N account over a month after he lost it. If you’re even entertaining the thought that those consequences weren’t really so dire, consider the damage someone could do if they had hold of your Twitter account for a full month not only to your organization, but also your contacts and followers through things like phishing or malware attacks.

A little more worried now?

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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]

Stop the negative sentiment before it goes public and you have a crisis management success

Online review sites like Yelp, Tripadvisor, Urbanspoon, Google and Yahoo Local (the list goes on and on) are being used heavily every day by your stakeholders. Doing things like reporting on a bad customer service experience or sharing a picture of the hair found in their lunch plate is second nature now, and, while you do have the opportunity to correct issues and hopefully work out a re-review or draw a retraction of a previous post, wouldn’t it be a lot better if you could catch them before they put you on blast in the public eye?

That’s the theme of a recent post from Software Advice’s Victoria Rossi, who covered this topic which fits in perfectly with the crisis management goal of minimizing the impact negative incidents have on your organization, its reputation, and its bottom line. Here’s a quote:

While angry customers are nothing new, the ability to vent online, where a bad experience can remain documented forever, makes negative reviews extremely risky for businesses.

“If guests are unhappy, they go to websites like TripAdvisor, and they voice their opinions. They go on social media and they trash the place,” says Robert Irvine, chef and Food Network host of Restaurant: Impossible. “Social media has such a far-ranging touch that it can make or break a restaurant—and I’ve seen it break restaurants.”

While it’s not always possible to prevent a frustrating experience, you can re-channel customer frustration. This is precisely what technologist Bernard Briggs had in mind when he created Humm, an on-premise feedback system that uses an Android tablet to survey guests about their experience before they leave the building.

Rossi goes on to cover two more organizations finding success with both high, and surprisingly low, tech tactics to intercept customer’s negative sentiment before it’s permanently etched into the web. This really is a great piece, and provides valuable food for thought when it comes to the often-tricky review sites and social media platforms that are driving reputation management today. To check it out, head over to Software Advice’s CSI: Customer Service Investigator blog.

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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]

Perfect example of why ignoring media training is not an option

A weak media appearance can, and often does, make a bad situation soooo much worse. Take the press conference held by the Gary Southern, president of West Virginia’s Freedom Industries, the company responsible for contaminating local water supplies to the point where 300,000 residents were unable to use anything coming from the pipes in their homes for much of January.

As you’ll see in the video below, it’s the very definition of “hot mess”, with Southern’s flustered delivery compounded by condescending instructions from someone off-camera as to where to stand, who to face, and how to conduct himself in general. Making things even more awkward was a moment at right around 5:00, where a reporter actually demands that Southern return to the microphone for more questions, a demand to which he, in a move that left our crisis management-oriented brains screaming NO!, acquiesces.

http://youtu.be/dUVpmS8JXJ8

If the fact that Southern was sipping a lot of water stood out to you, just imagine how it felt to those 300,000 people whose water his company had contaminated? While grabbing for a water bottle is never good press conference behavior, in this case it was a move with unusually dire consequences in terms of reputation damage.

It only took eight days for Freedom Industries to file bankruptcy, allegedly due to the massive lawsuits it’s facing as a result of the spill, and it clearly won’t be recovering as an organization any time soon.

If you run ANY type of organization, you absolutely must be prepared to speak to the media. Sure you can get away with spokespeople when it comes to smaller troubles, but when the s#^@ hits the fan, the head honcho needs to step up to the microphone. Get ahold of a good media trainer, or even a friend, a camera, and some the multitude of tips listed on this blog and others, and start practicing now. After all, only practice makes perfect, and you’d better believe that’s what you need to be when you’re the face of an organization that’s royally screwed up.

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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]

Government steps in to help contractors running critical infrastructure secure their systems

Experts have been warning for some time that hackers from criminal organizations and various nation-states with whom we don’t see eye-to-eye are targeting critical infrastructure, including power, water and nuclear systems, here in the States.

Recognizing the lack of understanding and preparedness among the organizations that run said infrastructure, the White House is putting crisis management tools in their hands with a new cybersecurity framework, described in this quote from a PCWorld.com article by Grant Gross:

The voluntary framework creates a consensus on what a good cybersecurity program looks like, senior administration officials said. The 41-page framework takes a risk management approach that allows organizations to adapt to “a changing cybersecurity landscape and responds to evolving and sophisticated threats in a timely manner,” according to the document.

Organizations can use the framework to create a “credible” cybersecurity program if they don’t already have one, said one senior Obama administration official. “The key message is that cybersecurity is not something you just put in place and walk away,” the official said, in a background press briefing. “There’s no prescription or magic bullet for cybersecurity. There are only well-conceived, proven ways of continuously managing the risks.”

Although it’s highly unlikely the framework provides a be-all, end-all solution to cybersecurity risks, hopes are it will serve to spark more discussion of and focus on the dire need to be aware of and protected from major attacks on our critical systems.

At this point it’s all but inevitable that someone out there is going to take over control of the systems we rely on for safety and security, either for financial gain, political motivation, or simply because they can. The better prepared the organizations who hold the keys to the systems that keep us safe and secure are to do crisis management for major attacks, the more quickly the impact can be mitigated, and the more protected we’ll all be.

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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]

Was Under Armour’s crisis management podium-worthy?

Nobody’s quite puzzled out what exactly caused the underwhelming performance of U.S. speed skaters during the Sochi Games, but as the losses piled up many looked toward the company behind the team’s high-tech “Mach 39” skin suit, Under Armour.

With massive hype surrounding the suits and the team as a result of Under Armour’s own marketing and broadcaster’s repeated mentions, expectations were high, but after six days of sub-par racing the U.S. team actually swapped back to their old uniforms, dropping the popular sportswear manufacturer’s stock price some 2.4% overnight.

The response

Under Armour wasn’t shy when the need for crisis management became obvious, telling anyone who would listen about the rigorous testing procedures for the Mach 39 and mentioning multiple other groups of athletes who found success in world events like the World Cup and even in other sports at Sochi itself wearing Under Armour gear.

With sponsors willing to put big money into speed skating in short supply and a team whose comments to the media had put a serious strain on the sponsor-sponsee relationship, nobody was quite sure how this one would pan out, but in the end Under Armour made a bold move to put the entire situation behind them, committing to another eight years of support for the U.S. skating squad.

It’s not all smooth sailing from here…

Although Under Armour got out in front of the situation much more successfully than the U.S. team did their opponents, a repeat in 2018 would be dangerous for the company’s reputation. You’d better believe there will be a lot of crisis management going on behind the scenes over the next four years as Under Armour works to perfect the suit, and athletes are better trained in what NOT to say about the people paying to support their Olympic aspirations.

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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]