Angie McKaig - E-Business Consultant and Entrepreneur
crisis management2010.02.25
Recently, a favorite web site of mine (link removed just in case they ARE actually infected again) came down with a nasty cold. Trouble was, they passed it along to me. And to other readers. My guess based on what I've seen so far is that no one, not even the web site itself, knows how many people were affected by this, how many hours and dollars lost to its cleanup. Eventually, after weeks of fighting the virus on their servers without alerting their readership, they took the web site down briefly to move to another server altogether and then, finally, penned a response informing their readers about it. This week, a few other folks seemed to be having virus problems relating to their web site and left comments on the original post. The admins of the web site responded privately, by email, to the complaints and posted one single Tweet about the problem.
There are so many things wrong in the last paragraph it makes me want to bang my head against something hard and spiky.
Which is why I tweeted today that they'd finally lost me as a reader for how they've handled this issue. After a bit of back and forth, the site admins tweeted in response: What would you like us to do?
Two words, folks: crisis management.
The reason we still have Tylenol today and not just some fond memories of an old brand of pain reliever is because when the chips hit the fan in 1982, the company responded with good crisis management.
Obviously, a small independently owned media web site trying to run with the big boys isn't going to have Tylenol's team of advisors or PR people. So here's my advice:
1. Don't bury important site news by making it small, grey and in regular-sized text in your sidebar but make it a large and visible notice to readers. (Think about how heavily product recalls are publicized.) This promotes reader confidence in your ability to deal with the problem, and any more than result from it.
2. Provide, right near the top of the notice, clear and unambiguous information on how to detect (am I infected?) and fix the infection (how do I get rid of it?) to your readers. Providing links to software. Advise folks on what NOT to do, etc. Many folks reported that their virus scanners were not able to remove the infection. Yet you suggested no specific software to cleanse the problem. Be the expert on this infection, since you were the one who passed it on to your readers. They look to you for this expertise. If you don't know for sure if what you know is ALL the information, say so: We're not sure. This is what we know. We'll keep you updated as we learn more information.
3. Own it. Don't hide the words "we apologize" at the end of a single sentence. Put it right up top and make it big. We're so sorry. You trusted us and it turns out we may have infected many of you, making you lose time and even money restoring your computers. We're going to do everything we can to win your trust back.
4. Be proactive. If you're receiving additional complaints, take down the site for a half an hour - WITH explanation, not just "technical difficulties be back soon!" - and scan it again. Even if you find nothing. You promised your readers you wouldn't leave the site up to possibly infect them again in the event of a reoccurence. Live that promise. Mention the problems again not just in a comment at that bottom of a post but with a NEW notice on the web site. Sure, say you believe it's a cache related problem if that's your conclusion, but also invite folks to let you know of any other weirdnesses.
5. Stop handling the problems, queries and concerns via email and other private or less public communication. That's not how to promote transparency with your readers. It doesn't do anything but make you look sneaky.
But hey, I'm not an expert on crisis management; I'm just a consumer and uber-fan-level reader of your blog (I've blogged, tweeted, and emailed links to your web site for years) who knows a thing or two about PR and marketing, and how NOT to use up the precious faith your readers place in you with hamhanded management of a crisis.
I'd suggest you try reading these links which have FAR more info on how to deal with a crisis effectively:
Blogging in a crisis (particularly pay attention to the example with the subway)
Crisis Manager newsletter archive
Crisis management articles
Crisis management for small business
Tim, my point is that everyone who runs a blog or any other kind of interactive site knows that the lurker to speaker ratio is at LEAST 10 to 1. Which means for every email or comment you've received about this you're likely to have at LEAST ten other folks (and I'd call that a generous number, in your favour) who have also experienced it and who either haven't bothered to let you know or haven't understood what they were seeing.
Additionally, if I understand how the virus worked, if they're viewing it via cache and getting virus messages....
They may be infected with a virus.
Even *if* they're viewing it from a cache, it's a cache of your site. Your responsibility didn't go away when you posted your nicely sedate and hard-to-find generically titled "important site announcement".
You need to provide updates, better tools, better and more clear apologies and you need to provide them to *all* of your web site visitors.
Just because you believe you're NOT infected this time doesn't mean users aren't experiencing problems with your site, potentially STILL getting infected... which means your job is far from done.
Frankly, I would have urged (in much more clear language) each reader of BlogTO to perform a full scan using whatever software YOU found actually removed the virus. If you don't know, that's something, in my opinion, you need to find out and then communicate to your readers.
Personally, I can tell you that even a fully updated Norton Antivirus could not remove the problem. I also tried a malware scanner and it continually crashed the computer when it encountered the virus.
Hi Angie,
I appreciate the suggestions. I can assure you that updating readers who visit the site with more prominent messages of this nature is a top priority. In fact, if all goes according to plan, we will be unveiling some design changes next week that help facilitate this.
Would you be open to having a conversation with me about this issue? You can reach me at 416.835.1322. Or feel free to send me your number via email or Twitter and I'd be happy to call you at your convenience.
Tim
I have to agree that the mishandling of this problem, right from the very first signs of a problem through to the aftermath has been hugely disappointing. But I understand how hard it is to take that massive leap and shut down a site, especially one that generates income and relies on timely content to sustain itself. But everything mentioned above in this post is correct, the bottom line is that you cannot, you just can't hang your visitors out to dry like that.
I still don't believe that you're "owning the problem", even now after everything that's been said. There's certainly talk, which admittedly is better than the silence that greeted people infected by your site, but I want to see action, I think you need to communicate to your visitors openly what is happening, right as it's happening. Saying that you have some upcoming design changes doesn't help people now, adding a prominent and constantly updated message (along with all the recommended information above) shouldn't take days, it shouldn't take hours. Get someone who can put that up now, today.
I was lucky and wasn't infected but I know people who were and some are still struggling with it. Get that information up there now, get it up front and centre as bold as you can make it and help people. I'm sure you feel like crap what happened and the way you handled it but nothing you're doing now is making any difference to those people who are still struggling. Step up and deal with it. It's the very least you can do.
Mark, your comments are bang-on. Thanks for helping to back me up on this.
Hi Angie,
Your criticism of our handling of the initial virus outbreak is fair and we have publicly acknowledged we could have handled it better.
The reason, however, why we have responded privately (and via Twitter and in a comment to our previous announcement on the site) to some reader concerns about a potential second outbreak over the past 24 hours is we believe that the site is not infected again.
For everyone who emailed or tweeted us about virus warnings over the past 24 hours we explained that our own analysis indicates the site is not infected and that we believe the warning were a result of the antivirus software analyzing cached versions of the site.
In each case, we asked the individuals who contacted us to clear their cache and let us know if they continued to receive virus warnings, and in each case the individuals reported back to us that clearing the cache had solved the problem and they no longer encountered any warnings.
As such, our assessment is that visiting the site represents no risk to you or any of the other readers as we believe the site is not infected with a virus.
Because of this we didn't think it was necessary to take further action because we don't believe anyone is at risk when visiting the site and therefore there is no reason to raise alarm bells when, to our knowledge, only a small fraction of readers have experienced the cache issues.
Tim