Significance of Crisis Communication Planning

by Purvi Dalvi Writer

Communication is the key factor that can protect your company's brand image in the face of a crisis. The most predominant characteristic of disasters is that they are unpredictable and can occur out of the blue. So, something like that can cause great negative publicity for your brand because you are not prepared for it. This makes crisis communication planning all the more important. It is basically the process of planning how to deal with unexpected crises to prevent the brand image from getting blemished. Here are a few factors that make having crisis communication strategies in place extremely important.

Be Prepared

Even though crises are unanticipated by nature, it is feasible and probably wise to be ready for the worst possible situation that may or may not occur sometime in the future. Setting up a special system for communication and basically being ready can help you protect the business in any dire situation.

Communicate Accurately and Timely

Even in the case of an unprecedented occurrence, positive communication can help everyone move towards a viable solution. In this day and age of media storm and real-time social media, it literally takes a few moments for information to start doing the rounds. In case of crises, miscommunication ultimately leads to misrepresentation and misinterpretation of facts. So, as an organization, it is very important for you to put out the accurate facts and numbers out there. You should comment on the matter swiftly so as to not lose control of the narrative. Crisis communication strategy will help you in coming up with different avenues in which you can get your side of the story heard in a timely manner.

Public Reigns Supreme

The one thing that can help you sustain your business reputation is putting people's safety and well-being ahead of your business interests. This ensures that people have faith in your brand and its objectives. And once you have ensured that the people are safe and sound, face them and the facts without any apprehension. Never attempt to downplay an issue that might have had serious repercussions in people's lives and alternatively do not let anyone blow a simple issue out of proportion.

Follow up

Make sure you compensate in whatever way possible for the losses of the people and then set out to regain the community's faith in your organisation. Having a plan in place beforehand helps in doing all these in a very time-efficient manner.