Managing Christmas crises: Ways to navigate PR challenges this season

With the increase in customer demand that comes with Black Friday and Christmas, the potential for unique Christmas crises is high. Marketing is important to create demand for your product and services, but it’s PR that influences perception. Whilst the season is filled with joy and celebration, it’s also a time when your brand can face many challenges, from shipping delays to customer complaints to staff burnout, as well as heightened expectation due to the nature of the season. The best way to handle a holiday PR crisis is to prevent it from occurring in the first place. This means planning in advance for peak shopping periods, ensuring your website can handle high traffic, as well as having adequate customer service resources, among other things.

By planning ahead and putting strategies in place, you can navigate the season’s unique challenges and turn potential crises into opportunities to strengthen customer relationships.

Here are a few tips to get you through the upcoming season:
Be prepared for burnout – If you think shopping is stressful as a shopper, think about your staff on the frontline, whether physically in store or online, dealing with enquiries and processing orders. If you are an entrepreneur doing it all, it can be very overwhelming. With customer service personnel and sales clerks facing a higher volume of enquiries, delays in responses can lead to dissatisfaction especially if it’s time sensitive. If potential burnout or overload is not managed well, you can have a crisis on your hands particularly since high demand and long hours can lead to frustrated team members who may unintentionally contribute to customer complaints.

What’s next?

1. Optimize Self Service Options – In times like these we see the importance of embracing digital transformation and the use of AI. Provide answers to common questions on your website as well as through social media via a FAQ graphic or video on your social media pages. You can also incorporate AI chatbot responses on Facebook and Instagram so that when someone asks a question, they can receive an appropriate response almost immediately.

2. Use a multi-channel approach: Give consumers the flexibility of reaching you through various channels e.g. email, live chat, phone, social media. Avoid directing all enquiries to one channel to prevent bottle necks.

3. Empower! Empower! – Equip your team with clear guidelines on handling issues, offering refunds or even give them examples of alternative solutions. If your team has to contact a manager or supervisor to solve every issue, both the customer and the staff member will eventually become annoyed. A well trained, empowered team is an asset in managing crises. Furthermore, be proactive in ensuring that you have adequate staffing to deal with the rush.

4. Highlight your team’s efforts – Acknowledge the hard work of your team during the season. Behind-the-scenes videos showing your team’s dedication helps to humanize the brand and fosters goodwill.

Be prepared to deal with the social media complaints – A single negative review or a complaint on social media during the Christmas season can gain attention quickly. Just as a happy customer may share their excitement about a gift or a product, a dissatisfied customer can easily turn to social media platforms to voice frustration; this emphasizes the need for a proactive PR strategy. A slew of negative posts can escalate quickly and damage your brand’s reputation.
Solution?

1. Monitor closely – Keep an eye on social media for mentions, tags and direct messages.

There are a plethora of social media tools that can help you catch potential issues.

2. Respond promptly and politely – Good customer service is not only reserved for in-store interactions. When you receive a complaint online, acknowledge the customer’s concern, apologize for any inconvenience caused and offer a way to solve the issue privately. Demonstrating empathy publicly while resolving the issue can turn a negative experience into a positive one.

3. Encourage positive reviews: Encourage satisfied customers to leave feedback which can balance out any negative reviews. You may have to offer an incentive or better yet, why not build a customer review strategy? The latter can increase revenue and build customer loyalty during the festive season and beyond.

( To be continued)

Candice Sealey is the Founder & Principal Consultant at Ignite! a Full-service Marketing & PR Consultancy that helps businesses/brands to stand out and communicate the right message to the right people at the right time through Strategy, Marketing, Media services and Design solutions.
She is also a freelance content writer, advertising copywriter, voice-over talent, media personality. Follow us on FB & IG @igniteresults Phone:784-432-2223. Email:igniteresults@gmail.com