Nearly half of business decision-makers don’t realise poor communication in a crisis could cost them customers.
Some 77% of business decision-makers would stop working with a business that handled a crisis poorly, but only 53% understood poor communications around crisis issues or events could lead to customer loss, research carried out by Hotwire found.
Nearly half (40%) of consumers have already walked away from brands they deem to have violated their personal values, according to the survey of 688 decision-makers and 658 CMOs. But despite these high expectations, less than half (47%) of marketing leaders in the UK are very or quite worried about crisis events. Moreover, only 58% of CMOs feel they have a solid plan in place in the event of a crisis.
Crisis skills gap
Less than half (46%) of marketing leaders in the UK have direct experience reactively managing crisis communications events, which is over 10% lower than the global average of 58%. Only a third (35%) work with a PR agency which offers crisis management expertise and services.
While UK marketers have most experience dealing with a lack of transparency (28%), they have less experience dealing with income and wage gaps, as well as sexual harassment.
Brexit is the top focus among UK marketers with nearly have (45%) having run a campaign on this topic, and 19% reporting they have first-hand experience in handling this issue. Over a third (38%) have focused on data security and GDPR (36%) respectively.
