02/28/2018

How to Openly and Generously Recover Trust

Learn from companies' behaviors during times of crises

We can learn a lot from how companies act during a crisis: when they do things right and act with their customers’ best interests at heart and when they stumble and put up walls to protect themselves from the very communities they’re in business to serve. This interplay of decisions comes into direct view of the public when a cataclysmic event happens – when the company suffers a security breach, when its members act inappropriately or its products malfunction in a major way. Regardless of the event, the result is the same: a disastrous loss of trust among its customers.

So, how should companies recover? How do they regain that critical trust and not let a failing of their corporate “soft skills” kill everything they’ve worked for? The best companies do it in much the same way that you should conduct yourself, as an individual, when you mess up and injure a relationship with a friend, co-worker or client: Don’t hide, be transparent and be generous. Below are a series of real-life examples from major companies. Learn from their mistakes – and when they got it right.

No Hiding
Gone are the days when you could control your image and have only the things you wanted reported. With the rise of social media, the power is in the hands of the people; with Twitter and Facebook and the “Wild West” of the Internet, there is no way to dictate what is published about you or your company anymore.

Please select this link to read the complete article from LinkedIn.