When I’m talking to clients about how to handle a crisis, and how to handle crisis interviews, I draw on my experience working in the BBCs Consumer Unit.

This unit produced exemplary investigations into consumer issues, which held businesses to account on behalf of people who had been scammed or ripped off.

When I worked there, the unit produced Watchdog – now folded into the One Show – plus factual documentaries such as Rogue Traders, UKs Worst and Brassed Off Britain.

Now, as well as Watchdog, there are a whole slew of consumer strands and programmes on day-time TV such as Rip Off Britain.

The response of both the angry consumers who contacted the unit about their problems,  and the (not very often chastened) company taught me a few things about crisis communications.

Here are my top seven crisis lessons from my time on the unit:

1. Consumers want an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, an apology and a promise that the problem will be fixed. If you, as a company, respond to the complaint quickly and empathetically, and pro-actively seek to resolve the problem, you may turn the complainant into a loyal and raving fan.
2. Working on UKs Worst Hair Disasters, our hairdressing expert said that one unhappy customer is six lost clients, multiplied to infinity, because they’ll tell six friends about their bad haircut, and they’ll tell six more, and so on and so on. Much better to offer the unhappy customer a free haircut straight off, whether or not you think they’re in the wrong. 
3. Not responding to complaints forces consumers to find other means to contact you – and nowadays that means, yes, social media. Since this can be read by everyone, that can have a seriously negative impact on your reputation, and will leave a footprint online forever. If for some reason you’re caught on camera behaving badly, again it can go viral incredibly quickly. If someone posts on a local Facebook group that they’ve got sick after having a meal at your pub, and they complained and you did nothing about it, everyone in the local area can see that and take appropriate action, leading to a drop in customer numbers.
4. If you respond to the media with a statement, keep that statement short and factual, with, if appropriate, an apology.
5. For full brownie points, it is better to front up and put up a senior executive for an interview. This makes you appear open and transparent, willing to learn from your mistakes and ready to rectify problems. However, you have to be confident that the spokesperson knows how to handle challenging question, and will get the tone right. Arguing with the interviewer, refusing to answer questions, making off-the-cuff comments and sounding either arrogant or defensive could make things far far worse. Remember, the sympathy of the audience is always going to be with the complainant, so showing sympathy or empathy and determination to deal with the problem is essential.
6. If something goes wrong at your organisation, people will be forgiving if you have a generally good reputation, and if you handle it well. If you haven’t and you don’t, then you could sustain lasting damage, whether or not the problem is down to you. 
7. My final lesson is not to wait and see and hope for the best. Things do go wrong within organisations: sometimes this is down to human error, sometimes it is because you don’t have the right culture or procedures in place, sometimes it is down to external factors out of your control. Whatever the cause, if you act before the worst happens, it will make it a whole lot easier for you to handle whatever problem has cropped up. Crisis training is essential. It will help you get robust processes in place to handle the problem, and ensure that your spokespeople can handle the heat.

I’m very proud of the work I did with the BBCs Consumer Unit. I worked on a whole series of challenging investigations which held some seriously bad people to account – one even ended up in prison. 

If your organisation would like help with either crisis management training or crisis interview training, contact us to find out more.