May

16

How to Handle a Disaster

The web is a strange place. While many of us try to develop standards communally, the web moves too fast for any official entity to regulate it. Personally, I am a fan of free online space, but it does make some people nervous, and rightfully so. The news is constantly going on about how dangerous the Internet can be and how social media is the lions den of sick nasty people. We could argue back and forth all day about the accuracy of this assumption, but when thinking about your online presence, it is irrelevant. The web is branded as a dangerous and dimly lit platform whether we like it or not, so building trust with your users is key.

Having said that; things break, and people make mistakes. That’s just the way the world works. Your servers may go down, you may have forgotten a piece of pertinent information, or maybe you just haven’t blogged in a while. At some point either a mistake or malfunction could compromise the integrity of your brand. But never fear! These cracks can be filled in! And you do this by owning up to what went wrong, or at least just letting your audience know about the mix up and what you’re doing to fix it.

It’s all about communication. Nothing builds trust better than going out of your way to tell your customers, “Hey, something went wrong. We’re working on it!” My hometown Chipotle did a great job of this about a week ago when they ran out of their infamous free-range chicken. They put up a disclaimer at the start of the burrito line letting people know that their normal local free-range chicken supplier wasn’t able to meet the demands of the restaurant. A different company was used to supply the chicken, and their free-range chicken would be back in the restaurant as soon as possible.

If I hadn’t read that disclaimer, I would have never known that I wasn’t eating free-range meat. And for the average Joe, this wouldn’t matter anyway. But as a personal choice, I eat exclusively free-range meat. Seeing this disclaimer, which caters to the few people who have made the decision I have, not only resolves any qualms I had with the restaurant not being able to get me the chicken I want, but it enhances my respect for and loyalty to the company because I know that they have enough respect for me to let me know about things like that.

This can be applied to the web, as well. One famous example is when flickr had problems in early 2005 while undergoing a complete hardware transition. They responded with a post entitled, “Sometimes We Suck.” It basically said that communication became very difficult while they were focusing on the unusually massive amount of work coming in. As people were having problems with their services, they weren’t able to get back to everyone all the time. They apologized sincerely and told their users it would get better and the new features of flickr would be better than ever. The humility of the post was comforting and exciting at the same time, and people began to trust flickr again.

In short, this is how you handle a mistake or disaster:

• Acknowledge it
• Don’t ignore the issue because you are too proud or don’t want to deal with it. This is how you lose trust.
• Summarize it
• What is the issue? What happened?
• Justify it
• Why did it happen? This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to defend what happened, just explain why. Did a truck not show up? Did you run out of x resource? Have you just been really busy?
• Optional – Apologize for it
• This step really isn’t necessary as the entire process meets the same end; humbly responding to an issue. However, an apology can be a critical tool in handling certain issues. Use your best judgment.
• Fix it
• Explain what you’re doing to improve the situation, and then actually improve it! This ends your explanation on a high note and gives people a reason to be excited about what is to come.

The key is communication, but more specifically, genuine communication. While the goal of this post is to help you retain the trust you have built with your users from an institutional standpoint, it is more important to be apart of a respectable brand with integrity that you can be proud of as an owner or employee.