Failures in day-to-day communications can create serious threats to reputation
Customer service is a critical part of crisis management. The way each individual in your company treats stakeholders is a direct reflection of how your company feels about said stakeholders, whether it’s intended to be or not. Provide poor customer service and people “know” you don’t care about them. Get enough people thinking you don’t care about them, or about an issue they’re passionate about, and you have yourself a crisis. I was shaking my head as I read through this infographic from K12 Insight because it’s only just shades off from perfectly mimicking several real-life school crises we’ve helped to manage.
Although the scenario is fictional it’s quite realistic, and is a good demonstration of how things can escalate if you neglect opportunities for customer service to act as crisis management. As we always say, “every employee is a crisis management representative, whether you want them to be or not.”
Erik Bernstein
erik@bernsteincrisismanagement.com
www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com
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