For whom the (fire) bell tolls

One of the questions we ask our clients is “What keeps you up at night?” These days, many things can keep financial services execs awake—worrying about security data breaches, the economy and other potential crises laying in wait. Adding to the pressure cooker is the explosive speed with which a crisis can be started or fueled through social media.

Many financial services companies have crisis communications plans in place (and if they don’t, they should). But some plans don’t yet factor social media into the equation. Social crises bring a new level of emotion and immediacy, and can require lightning fast management.

Is your company prepared for a social crisis? At the minimum, you need to:

- Identify issues that can lead to a crisis and have processes in place to regularly monitor for them.

- Have clearly defined steps to follow in the event a crisis arises, such as:

• Assess what public, social media and conventional media responses are necessary and disseminate them through appropriate channels.
• Alert your company’s advocates of the issue.
• Monitor the results.

- Establish a digital communications council involving all relevant internal stakeholders, including members of your legal, compliance, marketing, customer service, executive management, corporate communications, IT, web services, product PR and HR teams.

- Remember the human factor. The promise of social media is humanization. Organizations are expected to respond in the same way an individual responds.

Even with a detailed crisis plan on paper, your company may not be fully prepared to react in the face of a real crisis. Weber Shandwick’s FireBell social crisis simulator, featured this week in the Star Tribune, helps organizations prepare crisis response policies and puts key executives through an intense, “live action” and realistic crisis drill. FireBell allows clients to simulate real-time social media dialogue with fictitious stakeholders in a secure, offline forum. The simulator is intentionally stress-producing, so that participants feel like they are in a real crisis.

As Weber Shandwick’s social media crisis expert David Krejci told the Star Tribune, FireBell recreates the adrenaline rush of a crisis, so everyone can learn how to respond, "Social media creates a different environment. You can't sit around with 10 people and react five days later. It is now dialogue versus a press conference."

So, what keeps you up at night? How is your organization preparing for a potential crisis? Share your thoughts below.