I’ve always thought that crisis management is very important for a company, whether it’s big or small, but especially for a big one. Everyone makes mistakes but a big company shouldn’t take the risk of having a poor crisis management.
Let’s take an example. Imagine yourself owning a fast food chain restaurant. One day a customer walks to you and shows you a dead fly in her cup of drinks. What would you do?
Here is a real experience I had, just less than 2 hours before I was writing this.
Me and my friend, Charles, went to the nearby Island Plaza to have a walk – I don’t normally state the real name of the places if it’s for a bad thing but I have decided to write it out for this awful experience. At about 9:10 PM I told him that I felt a bit hungry and I suggested that we go to the KFC in the mall itself to take a bite. When we arrived, there were plenty of people and we decided to share a Snack Plate. He queued up and I waited for him at one of the tables near the window.
We started eating after that and of course, chit-chatting at the same time. As we were sharing the same cup of carbonated drink, we had two separate straws in it. My portion of Hot and Spicy chicken somehow felt a bit too spicy tonight, not to mention the mashed potato which tasted as if someone had pour a whole bottle of pepper in it. So because of the real Hot and Spicy chicken, I drank quite a lot of the carbonated drink. At that time, there was a fly which kept flying around and sticking on the leftover bones. Both of us are sure there was only one.
Charles finished his share of food faster than I did, which is normal. He went to wash his hands while I continued finishing my chicken and drinking the last sip of drinks. The moment I finished drinking the cup of carbonated drink, I saw a DEAD FLY in it!
I felt so ‘geli’. Seriously! I looked around and I still saw the other fly flying around. So this must be from the counter. I walked to them and as there was only one counter opened, no one attended me – one or two staffs walked by but didn’t even bother to look at me.
At last I had to call one of them and showed him the fly in the cup. His response was:
“Oh… I don’t know la… Eh Axxxx!”
Axxxx is the manager I believe. Another staff walked by and asked:
“Kenapa?”
And he looked into the cup, and just walked away.
The manager didn’t come and the staff was still saying:
“Erm… I don’t know la…”
I got irritated and asked:
“Where is your manager?”
And finally the manager came. I showed her the cup, she took it, and ‘oh… oh…’, and walked away. @.@
Thirty seconds later she came back and said:
“So I give you a new cup of drinks ya?”
OK. I think that’s more than enough. This is how you are going to loose a customer.
P/S: Charles, if you are reading this, let’s hope we don’t get diarrhea tomorrow.
