No time to lag

Crisis planning is essential to any business, especially one whose customer satisfaction levels always seem to be on the high end. In a recent Tweetchat, the focus was on crisis communication, namely how to handle them and what qualifies as a crisis.

A company must make sure the people handling the crisis know the organization backward and forward so they can handle anything that comes up. Having that knowledge also ensures that if asked any question about the crisis they can answer quickly.

A crisis also tests the company’s reputation; it can’t just be an incident that can easily be blown off. Take for example, the current Burger King Twitter dilemma. Because of that brandjacking, BK gained 28,000 followers because of the faux hacking.

Dallas-based Southwest Airlines not only scores high on customer satisfaction, ranking second of all low-cost carriers, but knows how to handle a crisis in a world where social media reigns supreme.

"’There's a lot of self-correcting and a lot of self-policing,’ Flaningan said. Sometimes, he said, it's better to simply let folks talk it out among themselves instead of stepping in.” (Wilson)

This was in response to a glitch when the company offered deeply discounted fares through their Facebook and the site got so much traffic that there were many technical difficulties. Some customers were charged up to 50 times for their purchase, but understood that the company was taking care of it.

Social media is key to any crisis and cannot be forgotten when combating something that has gone awry. People get their news updated by the second and, especially negative, news spreads like wildfire.