Crisis Communications
Unfortunately, crisis situations happen. Whether it’s a natural disaster, a company personnel issue, a product problem, an operational concern, or perhaps something more sinister, we’re experts in handling significant headline-grabbing crisis situations.
And much like issues management, there’s quite a bit we can’t talk about publicly. But here’s how we approached one of the most well-known tech recalls from the past decade: the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Samsung turned the smartphone fires into a communications dumpster fire that fueled interest in the story for more than six months, putting Verizon and other wireless customers in the middle.
Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Fires
Samsung issued an unofficial recall of 2.5 million phones on Sept. 2, 2016, just two weeks after the phone went on sale. But it did not provide any information on how to return the phones, what customers should do, or what direction their partners – e.g., the carriers – should provide to customers.
While the phones were manufactured by Samsung, in 2016 most people purchased phones through their wireless providers. Verizon customers were showing up at Verizon retail locations asking what to do.
Once Verizon settled on a game plan, we developed the communications plan. We leveraged all communications channels at our disposal. Our team scoured social media and responded to every customer who posted they were having trouble or did not know what to do. During this communications disaster, we knew we could drive loyalty if we took care of our customers and gave our employees timely and relevant information.
The lack of communication continued as Samsung implemented a replacement program. Unfortunately, the replacement phones began to catch fire as well. By mid-September, the Consumer Products Safety Commission officially recalled the phones. The Federal Aviation Authority would ban them from airplanes in October.
In the coming months, we had to reassure investors and other stakeholders that the recall would not impact holiday sales, while keeping companies like Apple, who jumped at the opportunity to steal customers from Samsung, at bay. We also had to have statements ready every time Samsung changed its policy or rolled out something new, like fireproof boxes (see Reuters story below).
In January, when a small holdout of customers still had not returned their phones, we decided to place a story in Fortune (below) noting we would begin rerouting all incoming and outgoing calls to Verizon’s customer service, essentially rendering the phones useless except for emergency calls to 911. The Fortune story drove other news stories and in the three weeks following, we saw a dramatic increase in Galaxy Note7 returns.
