There has been much information about dealing with a crisis. Making sure it's dealt with in a timely manner, reaching out to certain customers and media and ultimately making sure your side of the story is heard.
However, not much has been covered on how to deal with the after effects of the crisis. Yes, we may be able to see a decrease in negative coverage, or a decrease in coverage at all. But how do we really know if the customers will come back to the company?
Katie Paine discusses how to measure this in Chapter 11 of Measure What Matters. Dealing with a crisis is one thing, but what about the aftermath? She suggests overnight polling in either an omnibus or telephone poll. Telephones polls can be costly, but it is still less expensive than putting a full page ad in a newspaper like The New York Times.
After a crisis, the company's reputation could take a turn for the worst, or the main customer base could be unaffected. Paine gives the example of a sponsor for the Olympics years ago that had a crisis a few weeks before the game. Through these polls, they discovered their main customer base was not only unaffected, but still supportive of the company. If this survey had not been done, the company could have spent millions trying to win customers they already had.
Like Paine has been saying in most of her book, measuring can be extremely time consuming and expensive, but it will save time and money in situations to come. If the company doesn't have customers that believe in their product or organization anymore, obviously work needs to be done to win back these customers back so the organization can continue to grow. If the customers still believe in the company, then what's the point of spending mass amounts of money to win back customers when rewarding loyal customers would be much cheaper and more effective?
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