13 tips and tricks for effective crisis management

Hey, hey you! Remember that blog Gurdip did the other day? The one about using social media to shape your crisis communications? Well, we’re baaaaaack! This time bringing you Orlo’s 13 top tips and tricks for effective crisis management.

Whether something from the past has shown up unannounced, there’s unrest in the community, or you just need to act as quickly as you can, you just need to get your crisis comms right first time.

So, let’s get to it with our (hopefully lucky) 13 top tips and tricks for effective crisis management.

Cast your mind back and look at past experiences, competitor incidents, and any other industry knowledge, to define exactly what you count as a crisis, so everyone’s singing from the same hymn sheet and you can agree appropriate next steps.

With your plan in place, put pen to paper (or, fingertip to keyboard usually in this day and age) and agree appropriate messages you and your team can use to respond to any inbound interactions. Doesn’t have to be reams and reams, we’re talking general guidelines and snippets, not scriptures.

Ensure your rules for crisis management are set in stone, including clear details on any internal communications required, your recommendations and ideal ways of reacting to negative communications, and how you publicly acknowledge a crisis.

When a crisis emerges, who you gonna call? Nope, not Ghostbusters. Get your own team of expert stakeholders to call on when you need them to fight the evil forces across your digital channels.

As the saying goes – fail to prepare, prepare to fail! It’s essential to have a solid plan in place so that if you find yourself in a living nightmare, you can take the right actions and make the right decisions, even in the midst of panic.

As with anything, the only way you’re going to get better at what you do is by looking back and objectively analysing what happened and what you did. So, how did it go? Spend some time reviewing how well the process worked – the tricks, the treats and everything in between, including any SLAs or KPIs you set.

Think your team might need extra guidance when things aren’t going to plan? Brief your team, and anyone else who needs to know, and make sure they know where to find your incident plan, any pre-approved content, and (of course!!) the crisis management team, so they know who to go to if they need a hand.

You don’t want to find yourself on the back foot when disaster strikes. Use listening streams, such as Orlo Insights, to monitor murmurs across the web and set up alerts so that you can strike while the iron’s hot – also a useful tip outside of crisis comms and management, actually 😉

Take a look at the tools you have in your arsenal that can help you better manage a crisis. Whether it’s one platform or several, get clued up on the solutions and features that were designed with crisis management in mind.

Knowing a crisis is unfolding is one thing, but it’s the action you take that really counts. Avoid unnecessary hold ups and put your plans into action as early as possible to prevent reputational damage and cleanup that leaves your organisation in less than shipshape.

No matter how much of a treat your latest campaign is, it could backfire if shared in the midst of a crisis. Press pause on all scheduled activity so you can focus on getting things under control, or use Orlo’s Company Lockdown feature which allows admins to instantly pause all scheduled comms until the time is right for them to resume.

Delivering a great customer experience is high on the list for many organisations, and this shouldn’t suffer because of a crisis. Do your best not to let standards slip or you could find yourself in another (unwanted) pickle.

Take the insight from your review and use it to learn and improve! You never know what crisis could be lurking round the corner, so ensure your plan is continuously updated and improved, then no matter when it happens, you’re always ready to face the unexpected.