The leading crisis communication PR Agency in Romania

When a crisis occurs, the need to communicate is immediate

Issues can happen almost daily and often need to be managed on-the-spot. You must be ready with the public statements that have taken into account all the consequences that may happen if you state anything that can be interpreted as wrong or misleading information.

The statements you make need to have undertaken rigorous analysis and inspection against an indefinite number of crisis dependent, changing scenarios.

If business operations are disrupted, customers will want to know how they will be impacted.

Depending on the crisis type, Regulators may need to be notified and local government officials will want to know what is going on in their community.

Employees and their families will be concerned and want information. Neighbours living near the facility may need information—especially if they are threatened by the incident.

All of these “audiences” will want information before the business has a chance to begin assimilating the correct information.

the crisis communications plan

A business must be able to respond promptly, accurately and confidently during an emergency in the hours and days that follow.

Many different audiences must be reached with information specific to their interests and needs. The image of the business can be positively or negatively impacted by public perceptions of how you are managing and communicating in relation to the incident.

Understanding the audiences that a business needs to reach during an emergency is one of the first steps in the development of a crisis communications plan. There are many potential audiences that will want information during and following an incident and each has its own needs for information.

The challenge is to identify potential audiences, determine their need for information and then identify who within the business is best able to communicate with that audience:

Clients can Benefit from Crisis Communications Network Europe.

Lighthouse has become the primary communications agency in Romania and South Eastern Europe to become an exclusive member of the prestigious CCNE, the Crisis Communications Network for Europe.

With this alliance, Lighthouse are able to deliver best-practice crisis management and crisis communication solutions, leveraging the huge experience of the network to benefit all businesses in Romania.

Contact Information for crises

Contact information for each audience should be compiled and immediately accessible during an incident.

Existing information such as customer, supplier and employee contact information may be exportable from existing databases. Include as much information for each contact as possible.

Lists should be updated regularly, secured to protect confidential information and available to authorised users only.

Managing Customers in a crisis

Customers are the life of a business, so contact with customers is a top priority. Customers may become aware of a problem as soon as their phone calls are not answered or their electronic orders are not processed.

The plan should include action to redirect incoming telephone calls to a second call centre (if available) or to a voice message indicating that the business is experiencing a temporary problem.

The communication plan should also include procedures to ensure that customers are properly informed about the status of orders in process at the time of the incident.

Customer service or sales staff normally assigned to work with customers should be assigned to communicate with customers if there is an incident.

If there are a lot of customers, then the list should be prioritised to reach the most important customers first.

Managing Communities in a crisis

If there are hazards at a facility that could impact the surrounding community, then the community becomes an important audience.

If so, community outreach should be part of the crisis communications plan. The plan should include coordination with public safety officials to develop protocols and procedures for advising the public of any hazards and the most appropriate protective action that should be taken if warned.

Managing News Media in a crisis

If the incident is serious, then the news media will be on scene or calling to obtain details. They will expect an immediate and prepared response, if you fail to do this, the worst will be assumed.

There may be numerous requests for information from local, regional or national media. The challenge of managing large numbers of requests for information, interviews and public statements can be overwhelming, for the untrained.

Prioritisation of requests for information and development of press releases, key messaging and talking points can assist with the need to communicate quickly and effectively.

Managing influencers in a crisis

Almost every vertical market has an Influencer with a loyal following, if you are ‘signed up’ with an influencer, it is vital that they are contracted to the same guidelines as commonly used for sponsorship, with clear rules covering behaviour and statements.

They should only be utilised as a communication channel for crisis communication, under strict conditions, with a script approved by the crisis communication team.

Train the Crisis spokesperson

Develop a company policy that only authorised spokespersons are permitted to speak to the news media. Communicate the policy to all employees explaining that it is best to speak with one informed voice.

Determine in advance who will speak to the news media and prepare that spokesperson with talking points, so they can speak clearly and effectively in terms that can be easily understood.

The crisis communication plan should include documented procedures for notification of suppliers, partners and sales channels, in effect a crisis management handbook.

The procedures should also identify when and how they should be notified.

crisis communication for crisis situations

If your company does not have a crisis management playbook in place, now is the time to sit down and start planning. The very future of your business could depend on it.

But where should you begin? If you’re new to the process, building crisis management plans can seem like a daunting task. Luckily, there are just six key steps required to create a plan—and the process will likely become easier after you’ve gone through it the first time and the vital crisis management handbook has been created.

Assess your risks for crisis management

The first step is a risk assessment, which identifies potential crises that would harm your reputation, disrupt your business function and/or processes.

Work with your leadership team, your crisis response team, if you have one, and other key stakeholders to begin listing all relevant threats and vulnerabilities that could impact the company.

These may include the following;

what is a typical crisis situation?

• public relations blunders

• large scale customer complaints

• social media or influencer gaffes

• product recalls

• accidents at work

• cyber attacks

• data breaches

• management behaviour

• financial irregularities

• compliance issues

what is considered a major crisis?

There may be many different scenarios but the need to have crisis communication experts at your side, will relate more to incidents of a serious nature;

• accidents that injure or fatally injure employees or others, within the working environment

• property damage that impacts the business operations

• illegal activities or drug usage by employees

• liability associated with injury to or damage sustained by others

• production or service interruptions

• oil, chemical spills or harmful releases with potential off-site consequences, including environmental

• product quality issues

• serious financial issues

Pre-scripted messages should be prepared using information developed during the risk assessment. This process should identify scenarios that would require communications with stakeholders. All messaging should be scripted to address the specific needs of each audience.

Determine the business impact of any crisis situation

A business impact analysis (BIA) is a way to quantify the potential impact of a business-disrupting crisis.

Working your way through a BIA can reveal a variety of potential effects, including:

• Customer dissatisfaction

• Employee attrition

• A seriously damaged reputation in the public eye

• Lost or delayed sales or income

• Increased operational costs

• Increased marketing/pr spend to recover brand equity

• Regulatory fines

A BIA is an important step to make sure your organisation is truly considering every angle of a threat, and it can help to make a business case to anyone in senior management who fails to see the value of crisis management plans.

Ii is a proven fact that companies that are unprepared for a crisis, suffer a more significant financial loss and brand equity damage, when compared to companies that were diligently prepared.

Impress your customer audience

With an advanced level of preparation, you can turn all the crisis negatives into positive outcomes, resulting in improved brand equity, market positioning and customer satisfaction as audiences become ‘impressed’ with how the issue was professionally managed. And Lighthouse will be with you every step of the way.

Identify contingencies for the crisis communication plan

Now that you have determined what risks could impact your business and how, begin identifying which actions will help your company to respond effectively to each crisis scenario. Think about the steps that would be required to resolve a given crisis, what resources would be required, and how employees can help.

Build the crisis communication Plan

Once you’ve determined an effective contingency for each potential crisis, flush out the plans with relevant stakeholders.

Key employees such as department heads, can help to provide insight into available resources and potential hurdles. For certain crisis scenarios, you may also need input from outside parties, such as contractors and partners that work closely with your business.

Familiarise staff to deal with a crisis when it happens

It’s important that all employees understand their roles during a crisis. Remember, stress and panic can make it difficult to remember your role in a crisis response; however, there are three ways to mitigate the effects of stress.

First, ensure that your stakeholders have the information they need. During the tense moments of a crisis, people require very quick access to straightforward information.

Consider ways to quickly and effectively distribute a crisis plan, such as through a crisis management app, which includes real-time access to up-to-date documents, incident reporting, contact lists, messaging capabilities, and more.

Second, be sure to frequently train stakeholders on your crisis management plan. Stage regular tests and rehearsals to ensure that every individual is familiar with the plan, can respond confidently, knows where to get additional information, and understands his or her role.

Thirdly, it can be prudent to only target and engage the right people, as some crisis communications have to reach all employees, others don’t.

Our capability helps you decipher and engage the right people, sections, and geographies who need the information, without needlessly involving those who don’t.

Be ready to deal with any crisis situation

If you want the right people at your side in a crisis situation, you need Lighthouse Romania.

In addition to working with our clients, protecting their reputation by containing and controlling the narrative, the Lighthouse Crisis Management team also provides in-depth training, coaching and development based on our own extensive experience and expertise.

For reference, we can reveal that we have managed and helped contain some of the biggest and most worrisome crises in Europe, with our advice and crisis communication strategies.

You may read our recent article on Crisis Communication and Social Media, published in the main News Media from our ‘Press’ section of our site, from this link here > Press Article

frequently Revisit the crisis communication plan

Once your plan is written, approved and has been tested, be sure to revisit it frequently.

It’s vital to keep the plan up to date, especially as employees join or leave the company, new technologies are implemented, and other changes occur. It can be helpful to review and test the plan at least a few times a year to keep the content fresh.

Also remember, a crisis does not always happen during working hours and you need to be able to react to any given situation 24/7.

So if a PR nightmare or a product recall strikes on a Saturday afternoon, your people still have immediate access to the information they need to activate the appropriate plan right away.

Here are just a few criteria covering some of key actions that need to be given due consideration in every organisation.

• Contact database across all audiences

• Issues management book for call-centre agent

• Identification of possible potential crisis situations

• Define crisis scenarios and their action plans

• Crisis cell – who and what

Lighthouse crisis communication strategies come with service guarantees

From your brief, our experts and management team will custom design what we consider to be the best crisis communication strategy for you.

We will provide tactical options, budgets and targets that we will achieve.

You may be very surprised with the strength of our recommendations and the anticipated outcomes.

We would certainly advise you to measure our ‘service guaranteed proposals’, against your current readiness.