Put SMRT Corp Comms in crisis drill!
The Monday morning of Jan 21, 2008, must have been one hell of a morning for those staying between Pasir Ris and Tanah Merah as the SMRT train service between these stations of the same name was halted because of a “track fault”.
Through the service disruption, zm the studious blogger questioned SMRT’s corporate communications procedures when it came to crisis management.
(pictures gathered from Hardwarezone)
Wrote zm,
non-transparency on cause of service disruption. On the screens at the MRT station, i only knew there was a DISRUPTION from PSR to TNM. What’s the fault? Why is SMRT always so shy to tell commuters of the actual problem?
Is it important to tell commuters the reason for the disruption?
Yes. It isn’t because the commuters are a bunch of busy people, but a reason would have provided them the necessary information to make decisions on whether to wait for disruption or look at alternative transportation.
Did somebody committed suicide again by jumping onto the train tracks? Did a train run off a track? If commuters knew that this was a problem, they would know it would take awhile for train service to resume so it would be better to look for alternatives.
I believe SMRT engages in many emergency drills to prepare the staff for, well, emergency, but are their corporate comms department also tested during these drills?
During such emergencies or crisis, the corporate communications shouldn’t be just preparing a speech for a spokesperson, but they should look at how to disseminate such disruption to the public.
There a few ways to do. The fastest way is to deploy a team at the affected stations to inform incoming commuters that there is a train disruption and it might take awhile for regular service to resume.
According to some reports, there were only signs that say train service is disrupted.
During such crisis, commuters want to speak to humans to understand the situation, not robots or machines!
The next step is to send out a note to radio stations to make an announcement that train services are disrupted between station A and B.
Putting your crisis management procedures in a drill will also highlight some of the holes that needs plugging.
Be honest and upfront in a crisis. Don’t shy away from the problem as it will be made as if you have something to hide. which then ends up in speculation and rumour mongering about the cause of the crisis.
Wow that is so true. The more you keep mum and try to solve things behind the scenes, the more probing will occur, and it may even cause people to spread false word that would burn their reputation’s ass big time.
Might have worked in the past. But with the Net and the speed of information dissemination nowadays, big wide openness is the way to go.
Before Internet, such spread of false words were done in the coffee shop.
The official word will appear in the papers.
But none of it was recorded.
With the Internet, you have forums, blogs, etc. What you write and post it on the Internet, not only it is recorded for eternity (or until you never pay the hosting service) and it is googlable for the world to see and read.
Not just that, gadgets let you take photos and videos and with services like flickr and Youtube, you can host them and embed them almost immediately.
That’s why it is important to handle crisis fast. Use these web tools that are available to convey your message.
Unfortunately, those senior people see these new web tools only for amatuer use only and they should approach the traditional media to explain the situation.
While waiting for it to appear in traditional media, the peeps on the Internet are already gossiping about your brand and causing more damage.
Yes, the corporate bigwigs think that the internet is just another toy for the youngsters, like those Walkman days. But, today, the personal audio businesses are worth billions. Like our recent $318 taxi earnings mentioned by our good minister, the internet was furiously questioning the logic behind that figure.
It took awhile for the taxi company to response and clarify about the figure. If the ministry and the taxi company have taken the initiatives to clarify earlier, people would not start to have a bad impression of the minister and the taxi company. The timing of disclosure is also another important factor to a good PR exercise.