Whether you’re a newly funded startup or a billion-dollar brand: you have a high possibility of coming face to face with a crisis unless you have an amazing crisis comms team to help you brace the impact. Crises are unpredictable and almost inevitable; these monsters are so common that we all must have had to deal with them once in our lives or are probably dealing with one while I am writing this. Well, from an individual point of view, the first response, or rather reaction, to any crisis is the unconscious suppression of the deal, an attempt to keep the cat inside the bag.
Like ourselves, businesses and organizations too can have potential crises that might knock on the door, and for many of them the first action of their crisis communication plan comprises three possible actions: first, conceal the issue altogether; second, only allow a fraction of information of the crisis; third, just declare that nothing ever happened and everything is under control. I agree, not being directly open about the problem is valid when reputation is at stake or if an organization aims to discourage the spreading of misinformation. But in today’s digital age, where businesses are directly connected to their audience, what once was considered a smart move of handling a crisis can become detrimental for the organizations and might hit you back like a boomerang.
Thus, it is imperative for any crisis management plan to be based on transparency. Transparency is the willingness of a brand to openly share both positive and negative information with its stakeholders in an unbiased way across all communications channels. Audiences are part of your business endeavours, and they should know what’s happening occasionally, especially when things go south.
Maintaining transparent communication in a crisis is a non-negotiable smart move that will help you uphold the reputation and credibility of the business. Now, transparency doesn’t imply that a business is under compulsion to give away all information. As a business or an organization, it is important to maintain boundaries and decide, upon discretion, how much information must be shared at what intervals of time, especially at times of crisis when oversharing too can cause negative impact.
Transparency in times of crisis can help you strengthen trust, reduce uncertainty among the audiences and stakeholders, communicate a brand’s sense of taking accountability and acting promptly to resolve the crisis, promote honesty, and help unite your public and boost collaboration to contribute their part to solving the issue.
Nowadays, when brands are putting immense efforts into humanizing themselves, connecting to their audience organically, and including them in their mission, it has become absolutely important for businesses to keep their audience in the loop in times of crisis too by establishing transparent communication.
