Assign Blame Accurately for Damage You Do

Do you have in place a plan for responding to media inquiries if a product you sell or something your store does turns out to cause serious damage?
     The recall last month of hundreds of millions of eggs affected grocery stores, restaurants, and other sorts of retailers. The impetus for the recall was evidence eggs from certain sources had been contaminated with salmonella.
     One response from industry spokespersons was to say that people who had been poisoned had failed to cook their eggs thoroughly enough. Krista Eberle of the United Egg Producers’ Egg Safety Center was quoted as going on to say, “It may sound harsh, and I don’t mean to sound that way. But all the responsibility cannot be placed on the farmer. Somewhere along the line consumers have to be responsible for what they put in their bodies.”
     In my opinion, although Ms. Eberle was correct, what she said did come across as harsh. Understandably, this led to criticisms of the industry for trying to avoid blame. But research at University of Florida indicates that when a retailer makes a major error, the public, after initial shock, becomes open to the idea that a number of parties might share responsibility. The key is for the retailer’s spokespersons, at the start, to explain credibly what happened, what’s been learned, and what’s being done differently now.
     Accomplishing this requires you not only to maintain ongoing training of possible crisis response spokespersons, but also maintain a crisis communication network within the organization. When full information is available, spokespersons can frame the message in ways that protect the interests of your business.
     Here are the types of explanations that research indicates are most likely to lead to the public accepting that responsibility for damage is shared:

• “There were circumstances we’d come across only very rarely, if at all, before. Now we’ve built in ways to spot those circumstances promptly.”
• “Here is the information we’d been given, and as you can see, it was misleading. Now we’ve developed ways to get more accurate information.”
• “Here are the legal requirements, regulations, or policies that required us to handle the situation as we did. Now we’re telling those who set these rules what happened and suggesting changes.”

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