Man, just as everyone thought it was safe to publish their top PR and Marketing disasters from the first decade of 2000s, the Eurostar crisis goes and happens.

Even though the fault has been identified and sorted, there appears to have been a number of monumental gaffes and mistakes made in the communications chain. A few lessons have appeared though that should be handy pointers for PRs, social media communicators and those who just like lists because this was a collossal example of poor crisis PR in the digital era:

Get something on your front page

Look at the Eurostar front page. You would think it was business as usual. In this day and age people use Google and company home pages as sources of information. You need to be able to get your information up there as soon as possible.

People have access to constant real-time communications now – and are on multiple platforms

No brainer here. People already take getting information for granted and when something goes wrong, they want reassured quickly. Email, mobiles, SMS, tweets, facebook updates. These can all kick into place during a crisis.

No news? Rumours spread. Rumours lead to panic. Panics leads to disasters

If I was in a carriage with an infant, the lights were out, water and nappies were gone and I didn’t know what was happening, there is nothing that’s stopping me getting out of there. It’s a survival instinct. This could easily have been prevented with something like “We’ll issue updates every 20 minutes” and providing absolutely any information possible. I’m amazed people didn’t try and get out.

If you weren’t trying your best, people won’t believe you when you try to shift the blame

Eurostar seems to be passing some of the buck over comms over to Eurotunnel, saying that when in the tunnel, it’s Eurotunnel who run the show for communications, which begs two questions:

• a) No one thought “sod them, let’s get messages in there for the sake of the customers”?
• b) More pertinently, Eurostar weren’t being too forthcoming with information outside the tunnel, so don’t say you did all you could when everyone’s looking going ‘no you didn’t’. If they had been more open outside the tunnel then more people would be now blaming Eurotunnel for the poor comms.

Your sales team should have been part of the comms effort

I’ve said it before that good comms – especially in a social media age – is about more than just PR. It’s sales, front line services and many many more. I’m willing to bet that for at least 50% of people stuck on the trains, Eurostar had contact details that could have been used – a mobile (for SMS if nothing else) or email address. They could have got information out that way. But no, it looks as if Eurostar was behind with the times on that idea as well.

Don’t blame external agencies when you were the stumbling block

Eurostar haven’t said it, but We Are Social have taken an unfair wallop online in places. We Are Social were doing some social media work – basically a promotion – but nothing else. However, We Are Social have been getting criticised, even though a) this sort of incident doesn’t appear to have been part of their current contract and b) they actually dug in and helped out where Eurostar would let them. (see We Are Social’s Robin Grant in full on firefighting mode.)
Another point to note here is: you can have the best PR, social media, communications teams in the world: if you tell them nothing or don’t authorise the release of information, there’s nothing that can be done.

(Also, how Robin has handled this is an example of professionalism: going onto all the blogs speaking about it, putting across his point of view in a friendly manner, answering points where he can and putting up his own blog post – look at the time of posting – speaks volumes in my opinion, but that’s why WAS have their deserved reputation)

Twitter, Facebook, blogs should be part of comms plans – esp a crisis comms plan

Is it sinking in yet? These things aren’t new and fancy. They are established comms tools and very good for spreading information quickly. Other people online very often pass things on – either by retweeting, making it popular on sites like Digg or cut and paste. A phone call can only help one person at a time, websites can help millions (as long as you make provision for having ample bandwidth)

Saying nothing just doesn’t work any more (it never should have)

Not speaking implies you either don’t know what’s happening or you aren’t in control of the situation. From a business POV, neither is an attractive way to be seen.

Be prepared with a back-up website purely for crisis situations

I know of two companies who have secret websites which are just sitting there, updated once a quarter and it’s purely for when a crisis does come. It doesn’t mean they just flick a switch, but within an hour of an incident they have sites which are fully FAQ’d, populated with contact details and full information. Said sites have just been updated with social media tools so they are pretty on the ball.
These sites are never advertised, they just sit there. Just in case.

Make your findings public

Want to restore confidence in your product? Want to do so quickly? Make your ongoing research and findings public. Heck, perhaps the public might even offer useful insights. Crowdsourcing isn’t a fad either.

Real-time news will gazump you on news, so make sure you use them to direct people to your (regularly updated) news sites.

Common sense. Make sure ITN, BBC, Sky, CNN and all the others are running details of where people can go for trusted accurate info – a URL, a phone number, something.

Own your relevant online identities and URLs

Eurostar got caught out with this one at the weekend with people spoofing them. You would be amazed at how many companies still don’t register the basics. It’s easy to do so. There are sites which check all the popular sites for you, so there’s no excuse.

Watch the wiki

Simple this. It’s one of the first things that comes back for anyone in a Google search, so if you have a wiki page, watch it and be ready to counter negativity or errors.

There’s a bunch of things which Eurostar/Eurotunnel can do to move on from this but that’s another post for another day. And if anyone needs advice on updating their Crisis Comms we’re more than happy to help.