Responding to a PR Disaster – Lessons from Grasshopper
Last week one of the first and one of the largest providers of both virtual and hard line PBX services experienced a massive outage. In this instance thousands of users lost all ability to receive calls on any lines or to receive messages. Worse any callers received the equivalent of no dial tone. Some even reported a disconnection notice which instantly makes me people think your company has closed down for good.
The founders of Grasshopper have come forward and are discussing the issues in a blog post on their site. The worst part of the situation reported by customers was the lack of information. In their discussion Grasshopper has admitted to some serious failings and discusses the problems in detail. Most importantly in a future outage or service disruption Grasshopper has indicated they will provide a lot more information as needed. But will they be able to get their customers to forgive them? Chances are they have already lost a good deal of customers that no longer trust the service. Others are probably trying out similar services before making a possible change and still more are probably running dual systems just in case. But what can they do to keep existing customers aside of giving them many free months? One suggestion is to give them something for their trouble, perhaps a promotional gift that says thank you for sticking with us during out trouble.
They would have to monitor costs in that type of situation as choosing the wrong gift may end up costing just as much as giving multiple free months. How you might ask? Shipping costs have gone through the roof so choosing an inexpensive but large item will break the bank in shipping. A promotional tote or something like the Yogi Drawstring Backpack can be rolled up into a tiny package that would cost less than a few dollars to ship. They could put their logo on the bag along with a cute message telling their customers they are sorry. Give them something they will use for a summer and then hand off to their kids and the $10 spent would go a long way. Giving a partial credit for a few days of lost service will do nothing to compensate people for what could be tens of thousands of lost dollars.
The amazing part of all of this is that even a simple problem can mushroom into something much worse both technically and from a public relations standpoint. A relatively minor technical problem at Grasshopper became a PR nightmare as the hours ticked by with the company unable to locate the problem. It still may become a financial nightmare as there may not be any way of recovering. The news on the economy is pretty terrible and that isn't going to help cheer people up any time soon. To read more about the grasshopper outage you can check out the article written as it unfolded last week.