Timely, Reassuring Message to Customers Demonstrates Crisis-Response Best Practices
2/26/24 – – If you are one of the 90 million people in the U.S. who get their wireless phone service from AT&T, last Thursday was not a great day. From around 3 a.m. ET into the afternoon, AT&T’s network was disrupted by what the company has described as an “incorrect process” used to upgrade its systems.
While this self-inflicted screw-up was certainly not a good thing, AT&T deserves credit for what so far has been timely, effective crisis response.
Over the weekend (about 48 hours after service returned to normal), customers, including me, received this email message, titled “Making It Right,” from the company, which offered a link to a Q&A with more detailed information:
Hello,
We apologize for Thursday’s network outage, which may have impacted your ability to connect with family, friends, and others.
As a valued customer, your connection matters, and we’re committed to doing better. To help make it right, you’ll automatically receive an account credit.
We’re also taking steps to prevent this from happening again in the future. Our priority is to continuously improve and be sure you stay connected.
For more information, please visit att.com/makeitright.
AT&T
In Chapter 12 of The Crisis Preparedness Quotient, “The Five Rs of Crisis Response,” we discuss the five elements included in the most effective crisis response statements: Regret, Reform, Restitution, Reaffirmation and Recovery. Let’s see how well AT&T does in its well-crafted communication.
- Regret
The message begins with a straight-forward apology. The only demerit I would give them is the use of the waffle phrase “may have” to categorize the impact of the outage. Sure, some customers may not have even used their phones on Thursday, but better to say, “We apologize for Thursday’s network outage, which impacted the ability of our customers to connect with family, friends, and others.”
2. Reform
After a crisis has been brought under control, it’s important to assure people that you know what happened and you’re taking steps to lessen the chances of it happening again. Readers look for evidence of situational awareness and commitment to reform. AT&T does not offer specifics, but at least they touch this base in their statement (We’re also taking steps to prevent this from happening again in the future) and offer more detail in the Q&A, linked in the last sentence.
3. Restitution
Again, we don’t get specifics, but we’re assured we’ll “automatically receive an account credit” to compensate for our inconvenience. I especially like the use of the word “automatically,” which answers the anticipated question, “Do I have to do anything to get the credit?” More info on this is provided in the Q&A.
4. Reaffirmation
Coming out of a crisis, you want to reaffirm the purpose, priorities and commitments of your company or institution. These can be called into question when you let down your stakeholders. AT&T states: “Your connection matters, and we’re committed to doing better” and “Our priority is to continuously improve and be sure you stay connected.”
5. Recovery
Because service was back to normal by Thursday afternoon, the statement implies that this problem has been resolved. Sometimes it’s necessary to offer more assurance that the crisis your dealing with is behind you. “We’ve recovered from the crisis and now it’s business as usual.”
I especially like the Q&A linked in the last sentence for people who want to know more. Appreciating the goal of keeping things short, however, I believe one important piece of information provided in the Q&A should have been included in the statement:
We have not seen any evidence and have no reason to believe the Feb. 22 outage involved a third-party or that customer data was compromised during the event.
People read crisis response statements with an understandable sense of self-interest. Because so much of our lives passes through our wireless devices, whenever service is disrupted, we assume the worst, fearing that personal information has been compromised. So, I would have addressed this in the initial statement.
Hopefully, you’ll never have to write a crisis recovery statement. But if you do, remember the pluses of this AT&T response: Timeliness, incorporating the Five Rs, and answering as many questions as possible as soon as possible.
And take to heart the wisdom shared by AT&T CEO John Stankey this weekend in a message to his employees: “Unfortunately, it’s the reality of our business. What matters most is how we react, adapt, and improve to deliver the service our customers need and expect.”
Crisis Quotient Blog 