Crisis Management: What to Do When Your Business Makes a Public Mistake

Is your business ready for a social media crisis?

Are you wondering what you should do if you or a colleague makes an embarrassing public mistake?

To learn how to handle a social media crisis, I interview Gini Dietrich for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.
More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Gini Dietrich, author of the brand-new book, Spin Sucks: Communication and Reputation Management in the Digital Age, and founder of the blog Spin Sucks. She runs Arment Dietrich, a PR agency.

Gini shares common mistakes businesses make when facing a crisis, and the best ways to deal with these situations when they happen.

You'll discover the first steps you need to take, how to handle the situation throughout and when to seek legal advice.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Crisis Management
What happened with Applebee's and the challenges they faced

Gini explains how approximately 2 years ago, a waitress at an Applebee's in St. Louis left a check at a table that included an automatic gratuity of 18%. When she returned to collect the check, the customer had crossed out the 18% and had written, "I give God 10%, why do you get 18%?" The customer left a 10% tip instead.

One of the waitress' friends took a photo of the receipt, which included the customer's name, and posted it on Reddit. This led to it going viral and the whole world saw it.

Applebee's response was that they were going to fire the waitress and her friend, because it was against their policy to show pictures or talk about customers. Especially when a name is included.

What happened next on Applebee's Facebook page added fuel to the fire.

Applebee's replied to every person's comment on Facebook with a canned PR response. You'll hear what the response included.

People didn't take kindly to the way Applebee's handled the situation, and started to dig deep on the Internet. Pictures were discovered that had been posted with good customer feedback on their Facebook page. Although these pictures included the customer's name, nobody got fired for it. A Facebook page was then started to try to get the waitress' job back.

You'll hear what Gini's gut instinct was on the person who was handling the corporate Facebook page for Applebee's, and why it contributed to the crisis.

Gini advises you never to use a canned PR message on social media, because it's about being social. You need to engage, be transparent and remain human. This means you need to show sympathy and empathy toward what's happening.

Always take time to think about the statement before you put it out there.

Listen to the show to find out how the way you handle a social media crisis can affect your sales.

The first thing you should do once you're aware of an issue

Gini says that the first thing you should do is understand what has happened. This means communicating with both sides to get the bigger picture.

In Applebee's case, they should have listened to the customer, the waitress and her friend before they did anything else—whether they had a policy in place or not.

You have to remember that we live in a world of instant gratification, where people tend to react before they think the situation through. This is when trouble starts and the problem spirals out of control.

As a company, you need to step back and figure out your plan of action and your strategy before you can move forward.

You'll hear why it's important to acknowledge that you are aware of the situation,