Why Communicating Failure is so Important
With social media, a global marketplace, and mostly unrestricted access to news and the internet, it's so important to communicate failures and mistakes when they happen. Companies have begun to catch on to this. Rather than just blaming upstream or downstream, they instead will discuss with their audience what happened, how they will fix the mistake, and apologize.
The process of communication becomes important in getting your audience back. It shows them that the company is self-aware enough to place blame on themselves, own the problem, and make a correction to ensure it won't happen again. It helps consumers reinstate their trust behind the company and their products or services.
Trust is one of the single most important reasons in why someone would purchase a product or service. You can see it in how Google ranks sites, Amazon's star-rating system, and most websites have a customer review section.
Google ranks, and they haven't given us in which order, by backlinks and content. Followed by #3, RankBrain, their algorithm. Backlinks add credibility to the information that is being given to consumers. Content builds credibility for a brand, and ensures that they are trustworthy.
A star-rating system provides a similar service. The average star-rating gives previous consumers a chance to help the company they purchased from, but also gives an indication to potential customers whether it's a product they can trust or not.
So when a company gives a crisis statement, there are several important factors in making sure that a brand can keep its audience.
Google Primer gives a few very simple lessons in the importance of content, what it can do for your company, and how important communicating a failure can be.
If your company has recently made a big mistake, own it. Besides, didn't Mom always say that telling the truth was always the best solution?