With the fast growth of social media promotion and the place which companies and organizations assign to it in their market strategies expanding, a crisis is habitually reflected in social networks. They have reshaped communication practices by changing how the information is transferred from one party to another. These contemporary circumstances are of use for companies and brands, since they allow more varied opportunities for engagement and communication with their customers, building rapport, and trust faster. At the same time, social media possess the ability to render organizations’ reputations easily damageable, the risk of which tends to increase during a crisis. Managing the harmful impact that negative online feedback may cause is one of the priorities for social media teams; thus, several approaches to crisis mitigation have been devised.
A crisis may be described as an event or a series of events that have the substantial damaging potential for an individual or an organization. The type of damage produced by a crisis (physical, emotional, economical, et cetera) depends on multiple factors and the way an organization handles it. Crisis communication is one of the most influential components in developing companies with a large share of production connected to the service sector. By how efficiently the system identifies risks, responds to them, and stops negative feedback, one can also judge the overall work effectiveness with external communications. When dealing with a crisis, there are several strategies that organizations employ in communication with their customers. First of all, the prevention of biased assessments and distortion of facts is ensured by declaring the official version of events by an organization in their social media (Austin & Jin, 2017). In this way, organizations demonstrate informational transparency and establish their credibility.
One of the examples of skillful negative feedback management in a crisis can be taken from Gucci’s social media. The company received severe criticism and was accused of racist tendencies by Twitter users since one of Gucci’s sweaters from their spring collection resembled blackface. The company responded promptly and removed the sweater from its official website and stores (Givhan, 2019). Moreover, to stop the influx of negative comments, Gucci social media managers released the official statement on their Twitter account and publicly apologized for overlooking the resemblance. Although some researchers consider the apologetic approach to be overused and, thus, ineffective, in the Gucci case, it mitigated negative commentaries (Jahng & Hong, 2017). In this way, by employing the conciliatory strategy, Gucci has diffused the crisis – the company took responsibility and did not disregard the outbreak of negativity.
The way a company reacts to a crisis could potentially determine the place that it assigns to customer satisfaction rates. The approach that Gucci took to managing the crisis and the negativity caused by it shows the importance of establishing customer-centric traditions in social media platforms usage (Ogden & Ogden, 2014). Such a culture of engaged communication, personalized posting, and accountability help to navigate more easily a situation that could potentially be dangerous for a business with less appealing social media platforms. The ability to learn from mistakes in communication with consumers empowers social media managers to use an appropriate approach to the next crisis and execute the plan of action effectively.
On the other hand, some companies respond to negative feedback from their social media audience in a manner that may not be deemed as exemplary and, thus, only increases the wave of negativity. For instance, in 2018, a Ryanair passenger posted a video, where a man behaved in a racist manner towards a woman in the seat next to him (Dearnell, 2019). The video caused outrage among its numerous viewers prompted by the way the company handled the racist passenger. The official reaction from Ryanair exacerbated the situation: their response was slow and devoid of any sign of remorse. Consequently, Jahng and Hong (2017) state that “ineffective crisis communication, such as late or impersonal toned responses, can damage the corporate reputation further” (p. 147). The response from Ryanair was belated, and the tone was indifferent. A timely and, what is even more critical, apologetic reaction could have helped the company to handle this crisis gracefully.
Social media provides companies and organizations with an opportunity to manage a crisis in a new way: the dialogue between consumers the companies have become more direct and personal with social media advances. The combination of timely responses, personal interactions with the public, and emotional engagement is a widespread approach in crisis communication with consumers using social media platforms. Moreover, the reason for its extensive usage may lie in its effectiveness. In the case of Gucci, it helped the company to alleviate the damage from the scandal, and the approach adopted by Ryanair, which was the opposite, was not as rewarding.
The effect that public networks have on crisis communication seems to attract increasing attention from scholars. Social media accelerates the deployment of critical situations by allowing swift information exchange and sharing that was unimaginable before. This modification has pushed companies to revise their crisis communication strategies and made social media an indispensable tool in crisis management. Unpredictable and damaging events reveal the way in which an organization views consumers, which often leaves a mark on its reputation.
References
Austin, L. L., & Jin Y. (Eds.). (2017). Social media and crisis communication. Routledge.
Dearnell, A. (2019). Crisis communications in the age of social media. Forbes. Web.
Givhan, R. (2019). “I was the person who made the mistake”: How Gucci is trying to recover from its blackface sweater controversy. The Washington Post. Web.
Jahng, M. R., & Hong, S. (2017). How should you tweet?: The effect of crisis response voices, strategy, and prior brand attitude in social media crisis communication. Corporate Reputation Review, 20(2), 147–157.
Ogden, J. R., & Ogden, D. T. (2014). Integrated marketing communications: Advertising, public relations, and more. Bridgepoint Education Inc.