Top 5 Tips for Dealing with a Crisis

Kim Francis, President of Kim Francis Communications, and Chad Cohen, Vice President of 1851 Franchise Magazine, discuss helpful tips for crisis communication.

By Brigit Larson1851 Contributor

SPONSOREDUpdated 1:13PM • 02/05/16

Bad things happen to good companies; it’s just a matter of when. When it happens and if your company does not deal with the situation in the right way, it can spiral out of control--and fast.

While food-borne illnesses are a common issue that comes to mind for food franchise brands, there are many different types of crises that can occur, and your team needs to be ready to deal with any one of them.

Here are the top five tips for dealing with a crisis:

Be prepared
Have a crisis plan before it even occurs. Practice your plan with the entire team, and perfect it. While you cannot have every aspect of your plan ready to go without knowing the actual crisis, being prepared for common issues with an action plan will help your team react positively in an inevitably stressful situation.

Kim Francis, president of Kim Francis Communications, recommends that your company, “have preliminary outlines of statements created ahead of times that are pre-approved.” That way you are ready to go. Information for the specific crisis can be filled in and you can respond quickly and effectively.

Your plan should also include who will be involved in each step of the process and when and what message should franchisees, franchisors, customers, and reporters receive.

Build a crisis team
Figure out ahead of time who should be on your crisis team.

“The most influential departments are your communications team (internal and external) including your Director of PR and Marketing, your agency, and your legal department,” explains 1851 Franchise Magazine Vice President Chad Cohen.

While your legal team may be very important during the process, they should work as a function of your corporate communications team. Your company’s communications team or agency is best suited for delivering a message in the way you would like it to be received. Allow them to be front and center when it comes to handling the crisis publicly.

In addition to who on your team is involved, decide who will handle what role. Francis recommends to, “designate one spokesperson, or make sure if you have multiple they are all on the same page saying the exact same thing.” The last thing you want is to have your CEO explaining the issue in one way, and your CMO mentioning separate details that make your story look confusing and less transparent.

Communicate internally and externally
As part of a crisis plan, you will need to plan out who will be contacted and how. Decide how you will explain to your franchisees and what support you will offer them whether they are part of the crisis or not. Franchisees may need help handling the media to keep your message consistent and accurate.

Acknowledging the issue publicly and in a timely manner on social media and traditional media is also key.

“Social media has completely changed how you deal with crisis management. The response time and the need for a quick response is more important than ever,” said Francis.

One bad tweet or post can be seen by millions within a few hours. Tracking what is being said about your brand online and addressing issues should be a top priority for your communications team.

Be transparent
“The one thing I always advocate is, tell the truth,” Cohen states.

What’s worse than dealing with one crisis? Dealing with a crisis that has been covered up, hoping it will have gone away. Be transparent, open, and honest with your customers and they will understand if you are trying to fix the problem.

One of the worst things you can do in a crisis situation is to respond to the situation to the media with “no comment.” Cohen explains, “There are different ways of saying “no comment,” but those two words are an admission of guilt.”

Make a solution
Lastly, develop a solution to the problem that will help your brand in the future, but might also help alleviate an issue in your entire industry.

“Create a vehicle or solution that will help and elevate your industry,” says Cohen.

One of the most classic crisis management stories is from Tylenol in 1982. When the company learned that bottles of their leading pain killer medication had been tampered with once on the shelves with cyanide resulting in customer deaths, they knew what they did could make or break their brand’s reputation for years to come. They took the product off the shelves and waited to reintroduce it with a new triple-seal tamper-resistant packaging, abiding by a new FDA mandate.

If not for the entire industry, your company should certainly learn from the crisis to enact a helpful solution internally. Francis explained how she helped develop a crisis hotline for Checkers* Drive-In Restaurants that has been rolled out to every restaurant in their system.

“Every manager has been trained on when and how to use it, and the hotline is staffed 24/7,” Francis said.

The information about the crisis is then passed on to the designated crisis team at the office immediately so they can enact the crisis plan that is in place, if necessary.

Crisis management may be one of the most important skills to learn and understand for a brand and franchise system. Help your company be more successful in a crisis by creating a plan and teaching your entire team how to execute it.

*This brand is a paid partner of 1851 Franchise. For more information on paid partnerships please click here.

Top 5 Tips for Dealing with a Crisis

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