Looking at crisis PR from Skype failure--How to turn bad things into good things

I. Failure and compensation of Skype

Skype finally made a formal explanation for the failure of Skype last week to cause millions of of users to log in. Skype says the fault is rooted in Microsoft's operating system patches and a bug in Skype software. Yesterday, Skype's domestic operator, Tom, said online that he was willing to pay 30-minute free phone cards to all users who were registered before August 18, 2007.

After the failure of Skype, its official has been actively to account for the failure of the user, and actively to provide users with compensation solutions, and do not say whether such a scheme can be acceptable to all users, but at least its attitude is sincere, its practice is positive. The compensation scheme will doubtless attract a large number of users who have registered their accounts but have not used them to re-enter Skype, and become their effective users again, and may become paid subscribers after using the 30-minute charge of Skype's claims. At the same time, with the exposure of the media and the positive comments of the vast number of bloggers, such large-scale reporting will bring more potential users to Skype.

Second, the failure of the crisis PR case

Crisis PR success stories are not many, more are failure cases, including the Procter and Gamble Sk-ⅱ Storm and Norton manslaughter incident.

Let's take a look at Symantec's handling of the manslaughter incident. May 18, 2007, Symantec's Norton Antivirus software manslaughter of a simplified Chinese version of Windows XP system files, causing the system to break. As Symantec has a large number of corporate users in the country, after the event, many of the enterprise groups are seriously affected, more than a virus more than a security incident. What is disappointing is that Symantec staged a "most failed crisis PR" for multinationals, and the "arrogant" attitude was disappointing to many Chinese users.

In the May 19 after the incident, Symantec first issued an official statement to the media, admitting that the important documents of Windows XP were mistakenly deleted, and their attitude was summed up as "serious", but did not follow the usual practice to apologize to the user and to bring compensation. It was not until May 23, five days later, that Symantec held a press conference in Beijing to apologise to Chinese users, said Vin-centweafer, senior research and development director at the Security Response Center, "This week's main job is to help users fix their faulty computers and then consider other issues". Remain silent on the issue of compensation. Symantec ignored the interests of users, using a variety of delaying strategies, with the media and users to play Taiji, the compensation program is also under the great pressure of users to put forward. On July 17, Symantec announced that compensation for the damage to Norton's users was officially over, and that a total of 50,000 computers had been compensated.

In this manslaughter, Symantec experienced 7 media reporting peak: Crisis-> pay attention to the issue of compensation-> apology but avoid to talk about compensation-> first user claims-> Microsoft "backdoor" Guess-> compensation program leaked-> formally announced compensation program. Symantec's disappointing "Ostrich PR", the lack of sincerity of the compensation program did not choke off the crisis "Flames", the information in the media repeatedly shocks constantly spread, magnified. During this period, the negative information constantly burst out, the crisis evolved in waves spread, and eventually almost caused a situation, which for Symantec's brand and marketing will bring serious blow.

Iii. how to carry out crisis PR

Enterprises have negative news, PR of the associated object has three, one is the victim, one is the user, one is the media.

As the victim, when the crisis arises, it must be clear that this is the information age of networking, cover is not cover. Therefore, it is necessary to quickly respond in a short time, set up a senior leadership to participate in the crisis management leadership group, to predict the possible response of various stakeholders, to judge the direction and severity of the crisis, to formulate a systematic crisis management response plan, quickly make the appropriate deployment, and to show their position. Then the problem is solved as soon as possible to help users reduce losses, in order to retain the user confidence; third, reasonable and flexible compensation scheme should be put forward and implemented as soon as possible, lest some dissatisfied users will enlarge and spread the negative information.

Users in the event, if the company's sincere apology and timely treatment, will feel that they are respected, will feel that the other side is a responsible trustworthy enterprise, but will more recognize its brand and products, and more or less for its word-of-mouth marketing.

The media in the public relations event is generally in the information dissemination channel position, its basic attitude must be the customer face just, as long as the victim handles properly, the media will naturally adjust the center of gravity of the road, and will reduce the negative influence, thus for the enterprise to win back the lost goodwill.

Bad PR can make bad things worse, good PR will turn the crisis into a good opportunity for development, and smart companies can even take the appropriate "crisis marketing".

No one can guarantee that there will never be bad news, so crisis PR is a compulsory course for business leaders.