Some things may be predictable, others definitely not. However, you’ve got to be in both scenarios timely and effectively because today every company is publicly exposed online. Therefore any organization may be under customers’ attack in case of a massive failure or incident affecting a large number of people – at the same time. So, incident or crisis it be, getting equipped with an effective response plan is no longer an option.
From an issue to customer’s attack
Picture this: a website access issue, an energy power outage or an IT system disruption. They are all negative situations the immediately affect a vast number of customers. As a first consequence, they ask themselves: “why can’t I log onto my bank account?” “Why all numbers are wrong” and mostly, “what’s going on and when are they going to fix it?” And when we all – as customers – get emotional, we usually hit two main targets:
- Customer Service in order to report the issue and ask for support, via phone, email, live chat, Whatsapp or other digital channels.
- Online public channels (online reviews platforms Google/Trustpilot and social media) to vent our frustration where ‘everybody’ can read it and add their own bad experience.
So, here are major bad consequences on each target:
- Customer Service has to deal with huge conversation peak volumes over all support channels. Such a storm generates also longer waiting times and more aggressive customers to be handled. That’s a super stressful and hard situation to deal with, even for highly-skilled and seasoned customer support agents.
- Brand reputation is being questioned with hundreds of public posts or online reviews. And if the brand is not able to respond in a quick and convincing ways, a domino effect is guaranteed with further escalations (radio, TV channels, social media influencers or VIPs adding fuel to the fire).
What are the different impacts?
Customer service damages have a strong impact but short duration (hours, maximum one or two days) whereas brand reputation damages have a strong impact and a longer duration (days, weeks, in some cases even months!).
A recent case example
Just a few days ago, all major airports in North of Italy were unable to operate flights due to a radar connectivity problem. The issue lasted some hours and consequently all affected airports and airline companies’ customer services were ‘under attack’ by thousands of stranded, irate customers.
Over to you
Whether it’s an incident or crisis, what’s your plan to mitigate their effects in a timely manner? And how are you going to handle digital conversations with your customers?
👉 Learn more about my Crisis Response coaching program.
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