Preventing Online Crises James L. Horton Not long ago, a member of our firm was checking the Internet for client news. He entered the name of a rental truck company into a search engine that catalogs conversations from Internet news groups. Up popped a scathing series of messages from a university student who felt a company dealer had wronged him. And, as unhappy individuals often do on the Internet, the university student had posted his complaints to several newsgroups, reaching thousands of people. To the rental truck company’s credit, it swung into action and solved the student’s problem immediately. The grateful student posted a message stating that his complaints had been resolved. That is the good part of the story. The bad part is that the problem was discovered by chance. The rental truck company did not have a formal program to track Internet complaints and may have been victimized in the past without knowing it. In another case, a computer manufacturer launched a new consumer-oriented PC. During the launch, it promised a modem technology that would not be available for the first shipments. A few weeks later, the modem supplier stopped making the promised technology because it was obsolete, and as a result, the company could not deliver it. Angry PC owners launched a Web site and started bashing the computer maker for breach of promise. The PC owners went on Internet newsgroups and called for other owners of the PC to visit their Web site and add comments. Meanwhile, a mid-level manager of the computer maker found the Web site and, out of concern, advised the angry owners on behalf of the company. Unfortunately, the manager did not tell the company he was doing that. By time the company discovered the crisis, it was too late. News of angry owners reached print media, and the manager’s advice had put the company in a box. The company resolved the issue by offering to deliver the technology to any PC owner who wanted it, even though it was obsolete. More than 45 million people use the Internet just in the U.S. This does not include millions more who use commercial online services, such as America Online or Prodigy. Any one of them can go online to praise or damn your company for real or imagined deeds. Increasingly, they are doing so. The National Law Journal (April 13, 1998) noted the increasing frequency of litigants using Web pages to plead cases before they go to court. Some of these litigants were corporations who try to bolster their positions against other companies and regulators. These incidents highlight the urgency of monitoring online and of preventing online crises. Every organization is vulnerable online, but some receive more attention than others. Technology and consumer product companies appear to be discussed the most, followed by business-to-business firms. Private companies and high-level business-to-business firms show up the least, or not at all. An online crisis is any online message or activity that threatens the survival and success of your organization or impugns your organization's reputation and harms its ability to do business. A crisis arises from falsehoods or rumors, facts that threaten you or activities involving your products and services that damage their reputations. For example, Mattel toys has a recurrent problem with individuals who publish photos or drawings on their Web pages of Mattel’s Barbie and Ken toys engaged in simulated sex acts. Auto companies have been victimized by interest groups that deluge them with electronic protest mail, resulting from inaccurate stories circulating in newsgroups. Online crises always have the potential of being serious because:
Internet crises can come from several sources – for example, attack or "gripe" pages. Yahoo!, the online search catalog maintains a list of them. A few examples are:
There also are "appeals" pages seeking support for a cause, and "copycat Web sites" that look like and shadow an original but are filled with venom. Pornographers increasingly use "stealth URLs." These are slight variations on legitimate domain names that confuse users and help pornographers hide from online filters designed to block sex sites. For example, webchaperone.com/stealthlist.html, a page maintained by a firm that makes filters to block sex sites, provides the following.
There are more than 8,000 newspapers, magazines, broadcasters and newswires with web sites, any one of which might contain a report on your company or its products and services. Moreover, there are hundreds of journalists who work strictly online today. One of the best known is Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report who has been on the leading edge of several Clinton scandal stories. Then there are discussion groups. The Internet alone has more than 40,000 to 50,000 conversation groups on thousands of topics. Commercial online services such as America Online have hundreds more. Even with monitored discussions that attempt to prevent the worst flaming, harmful information can and does appear about companies, their employees, products and services. Online is the "freest" form of free speech. The good exists alongside the bad and the ugly, and there are few, if any, gatekeepers to stop inaccuracies or errors. On the other hand, online is an invaluable resource and outlet to companies and a vast library of information and insight. This is why companies should move quickly to protect themselves against harmful information while exploiting online for the best that it has to offer. In our experience, online crisis communications is as much avoidance as handling. The best way to manage an online crisis is to prevent one by mounting a fast response to harmful information that either counters or stops it before it spreads unchecked. The best way to achieve this is through an early-alert system that constantly monitors online forums, web pages and information sources. This requires:
Early warning systems begin with an online audit. This is a systematic -- and tedious -- search of the Internet and online services for mentions of your organization, its employees, stakeholders and products and services. During the audit, you will identify newsgroups and web sites where your organization is discussed or likely to be talked about and issues that can disrupt your business and principal actors, such as disgruntled customers, competitors and interest groups. Online audits are best done through skillful use of search engines, catalog databases and link sites. Most companies will find that within the vast online universe they are discussed in just a few places. The task is to find those places and watch them. Another step is to track reporters and others who use these sites as sources for stories then write for traditional print or electronic media. In our experience, there is a lag of days to a few weeks from the time discussion boils in a newsgroup until it shows in print. This lag provides time to respond to reporters who are likely to pick up the story. A final task in tracking is to monitor the spread of harmful news from site to site. A tolerable situation can quickly become intolerable if two then six then 10 newsgroups begin discussing your company negatively. An important step in successful crisis avoidance is regular reporting with recommended action items to key executives about what is written online. This prevents your organization from being surprised when an online issues surfaces or turns ugly. Effective reporting is more than printing messages and circulating them. It requires analysis of message sources, summarizes online discussions, identifies principal writers and estimates a writer’s credibility with newsgroup participants. There are plenty of cranks, conspiracy theorists, "ragers" and "flamers" online. A company can waste time responding to them when they will never listen to reason anyway. The goal should be to identify and isolate hard-core haters from those with legitimate concerns through message analysis. In the case of the defective modem at the beginning of this article, we performed a random sample analysis of 500 angry messages and learned that four individuals were leading the hate campaign. They were feeding off each other. Our recommendation to the company was to contact these individuals immediately and take care of their concerns, if possible, and if not, to handle other complainants quickly. Speed is essential in crisis avoidance. The swiftness of online does not allow for committee meetings, prolonged discussions or lengthy decision processes. One must get information out quickly, intervene in newsgroups with judgment and reliance on facts while avoiding flame wars that damage credibility. Simultaneously, one must prepare for emergence of the issue into traditional media by reaching targeted reporters today with the company’s information. And, the organization must seek to identify and reach rapidly the principal source(s) of rumors, gripes, facts, etc to defuse their issues and stop falsehoods through whatever persuasive means might be effective. Online publishing is an important part of handling online crises. It is fast and easy to put facts and rebuttals on a Web-site. This allows you to stay ahead of news flow while gaining immediate reach to traditional and on-line media. It takes a short time to open a Web page, or publish on an existing one. It takes less time to notify media where to find information online. Online can serve as a news media resource between press conferences. (It already serves as a daily news bureau for many companies.) Online crises are not going away. If anything, they will become frequent as a larger percentage of the population gains access to the Internet and commercial online services. Companies that ignore online are jeopardizing themselves and their businesses. Online is a major medium that needs monitoring just as much as newspapers, magazines and television. |
