Communicating in a modern world

Communicating in a modern world

Laura Meadows

VP, xMatters, EMEA

• I’ve been specialising in emergency comms for 12 years

•Worked globally with SME - Corporate businesses

•Seen huge changes in how communications work

• I used to have a pager for “bomb alerts”

• I am terrible at PowerPoint slides

•Very passionate about communication best practices

About me

Confidential and Proprietary 2

•Communication is now faster than ever and expected to be proactive

•Social Media is everywhere – reputational risk bigger than ever

•We have access to news 24/7/365

•We measure customer experience based on numbers of clicks

•Everyday is a risk to our data

•We all suffer with Alert Fatigue

•Our customers can complain publically anytime

What has changed in the modern world?If you sell there you should support there


Lets firstly go back to the basics

Where to start


*Source: place source info here

• Staff – resolves/stakeholders and general employees

Message may differ across all of these groups

Create a customer facing message?

• Customers – B2B – B2C

Consider SLA’s

• Suppliers – could this be a wider problem?

• Regulators

• Press

• Authorities

• The person best to put in front of the media can depend on the incident

itself!

Who should I communicate to?Some suggestions from the ISO standard



• Justification of the work: We will undertake a maintenance on our M-MSP network to eliminate a risk to service availability by completing a remote software upgrade on Accedian LTS devices within the M-MSP Network to the latest version, in various different Colt locations. Colt have been working in conjunction with our vendor to have the software built and tested and it’s now published on the definitive media library ready for release. During the maintenance window Colt engineers will execute a comprehensively tested method of procedure with the objective to remotely upgrade all Accedian devices to the latest vendor recommended software release. The activity will result in a disruption to services for 30 minutes per device, during the first 5 hours of the maintenance window, but we quote a 6 hour window to cover all eventualities.

Back-out plan: 60 minutes are reserved to roll the upgrade back on any device, should we face any unforeseen issues during the works. This maintenance was previously raised under reference CRQ1-2608680408 on the 20th of May, but was abandoned before the work started, due to an operational upgrade which were ongoing.

What to say - Is this helpful?An extract from a recent email I received



•We will be carrying out maintenance on our phone lines on Friday 7th

July at 8pm.

•This will impact your ability to use phones and internet within the office

•We expect the downtime to last 4 hours

•We will confirm when everything is complete

• If you need help during this time call 0800 123456 and quote

reference ABC123

A simple example



• Internal vs external messaging

• Instructions you give may be different

• Resolvers, general staff, stakeholders, client facing teams

•Arm your public facing teams – they may be approached

•Make it relevant – otherwise you’ll get alert fatigue

•Keep it consistent

• I recently didn’t and it was a nightmare!

Remember your audienceWhat you say should change depending on who they are



How?Is this a good method?


Email is down!Better send an email to let people know!



•Multi channel – prioritize based on the incident • SMS, Email, Mobile App, Voice call

•Social Media

•Operational SLA communications• What are you contractually bound to do?

•Press statement

•Avoid using internal dial in hotlines• Again think of your user experience

So how can I communicate?


•Offer additional resilience SMS, phone vs apps via data and wifi

•App driven culture

•Location based services – do they really work in the workplace?

•Glued to most hands!

•Allow priority based alerting – users can control their needs

Smart phones!


Lets get social



•First place many customers look for details of outages

•Can quickly spiral into reputational issues

•You can’t delete a tweet – so get it right

•Your SM team are not always the best to write a statement

•Your SM team should have a process to alert to an issue

•You can’t control the resilience – it shouldn't be your only method

• It is not secure – its no good for confidential info

Social MediaIf you sell there you should support there


Some recent headlinesReputational risk – cant avoid it but can improve it



We all like to make informed decisions So arm people with accurate knowledge



O2

Versus

BA

The word on everyones mind……cyber…..

•People are very nervous about data!

•Are you a business that holds personal data and if so how much?

•You may lose access to your usual systems – even social

• Incoming calls are very expensive and can further bring you down

•Reputational risk is huge

All the basic principles apply Some additional things to consider



•Be timely – acknowledge there may be a problem

•Give advice – what should your clients do?

• Change passwords, stop bank cards,

•Manage inbound info – advise where help can be found and when it

is right to contact you anyway

•Show concern – people need to know you care about them

•Make decisions about losses and refunds asap - are you going to

refund my fees?

So what should we do?Response is key



•Summary of issue – what is happening, make it clear

•Current action being taken – what are you doing to resolve

•When will a next update be issued? This should be time stamped

•How can you get help in the meantime? Avoid inbound calls

•Relevant content and language to recipient

•Use consistent “from” addresses – email, phone, SMS

Best practice for a communication



•Be prepared – template where possible

•Be consistent – have one core process that people can expect

•Be considerate – what would you expect if it were you?

•Be proactive – a lot to be said for call avoidance

•Think of customer experience – don’t make them call you

Summary tips



Questions?


Communicating in a modern world

Business

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