Let's Investigate: Communication Problems that need to be identified as a Preparation to Response to a Crisis

  The first one is communication problem in the crisis communication team. The public relations executive must have crisis communication expertise so that he or she will know what to do when communication problem occurs in the team, among the members. This stage is very important. For example, the team should be working together sufficiently and cannot have any problem because this can lead to the failure of getting conformity to resolve upcoming problem.

 The second one is communication problem of the spokesperson. Spokesperson in the crisis communication team must have the ability to communicate well and ensure message conveyed is complete and useful to resolve the problem. He or she will be the only person to speak when crisis happened so, must be trained in advance to be a good speaker and able to ‘stand up’ during the crisis.

The next communication problem is problem in giving notification to the internal and external stakeholders when crisis happened. Company must establish notification system that allow them to rapidly reach stakeholders. Companies must consider to upgrade their communication system as a preparation of any problem. For example today there is technology that can be set up so that it can automatically buzz all stakeholders in pre-established database and keep trying to reach them to convey the message.

Other than that, the next one is problem to identify the company’s stakeholders. The communication team must know who are the company’s stakeholders? Who are the important ones? Either employees? Or banks? They need to be informed about the crisis and the team must then identify the best way to let them know about the problem- also to avoid them from making pre-speculation if they heard the news from other source.

In conclusion, the communication issued related to crisis response is very important to ensure damage can be minimized. Companies need immediate response and the first stage of it is comes from the communication team before the next level. The slower the response, the more damage brought by the crisis is incurred.