Crisis Communication Plan

Globecell stormed the smartphone industry, with the most successful smartphone around at the moment, as a company we strive for a reputation that matches this success. Our current reputation is of a modern, innovative and reliable company.

However this month our latest handset has been hit with a fault leading to thousands of recalls. This needs to be managed to prevent damage within and around our organization. Management of this crisis will need to assure shareholders, employees and customers.

Siomkos and Kurzbard (1994) present three elements directly influencing the intensity of the impact of recalls on consumer behavior. In their research, crisis management, the company's reputation and external effects. These three elements will be our main focus until our corporate crisis is resolved.

Internal communication will be a key audience that includes employees and shareholders with the main message of awareness; this will take part through formal written communication and face-to-face methods.

The second but equally important audience will be the public and media this message will revolve around informing and reassuring our customers, channels of this will be through the press orally and written methods through email and company online blog.

Using these strategies will promote clear communication and ensure valid information is publicly recognized. Having a key strategy is the main element needed to overcoming a situation that could have negative and damaging effect on a company. This following quote tells that having a strategy allows us as a global company to turn the negativity around and use it as an advantage to better ourselves as an organization.

"A process of strategic planning for a crisis or negative turning point, a process that removes some of the risk and uncertainty from the negative occurrence and thereby allows the organisation to be in greater control of it's destiny"

Fearn-banks (2007, p. 7)

The corporate crisis over our faulty handsets will have negative effects. The crisis will effect our Globecell brand as the reliability of all our phones will now be questioned The fault with our handsets leading to recall goes against our whole company's message to the public, we were a smartphone that would not let them down, and be more reliable then our competitors. Globecell as a brand has now misled our customers with the ideal that our handsets were faultless. Misleading our customers and loosing customer trust within our brand makes us open to prejudice views and loss of credibility within the industry. However if we communicate still reflecting our strong branding message we will be more likely to recover according to Ahluwalia et al (2000), Dawar and Pilutla (2000) they suggest that "strong brands are likely to be more immune to post recall impacts than weaker brands."

The handset fault will have immediate effect on our customer satisfaction levels. Globecell customers will now have loss trust within our brand and products, leaving them hesitant to invest within our company. Customers now have an excuse to choose a competitors phone above one of Globecell's handsets. This can lead to a loss in our share of the smartphone market and a step back from having market domination. These issues will mean lower sales leading to lower profit and targets not being met. These negative impacts to the Globecell Company can be kept to a minimal with the correct implementation of a crisis communication that targets our external market.

The recall of our smartphone products may have a wider effect within the industry. The negativity surrounding this crisis may spillover and effect all sales of smartphones within the market. If customers have doubts they may associate the fault with our handset to all smartphone handsets leading to customers loosing confidence to purchase a smartphone at this period of uncertainty.

Future product releases will have to have extra testing and research to ensure there will be no chance of history repeating itself. This is important as our future product release is key to progression in regaining trust within our brand and reminds the public our products are of the highest of quality within the smartphone market. The recall of our previous handset will make people more cautious to buy our next model, it will also mean people will be increasingly more aware to spot any fault with future product releases. To prevent drop a in sales for any next release this will a entail a large sales and marketing operation will be vital to ensure the public will choose Globecell against any other competitors.

Globecell as a large global corporate company will mean formal internal communications will be a high priority. Awareness within the organization will ensure any employee queries and maintain trust within us as an employer.

Internal communications will be in the form of downward communication, from the head of the company down, this makes sure that important, correct, information is known and co-operation can be encouraged. A good way to contact employees would be emails; these are quick, cheap and effective method to reach vast amounts of people. A good way to continue employee trust will be to hold small