Things happen, and sometimes without a pre-warning – business is not an exception when it comes to those sudden happenstances. One of the ways to ensure effective communication when there’s a crisis in business is to prepare for such a crisis.

The Nature of Business Crisis

Business crisis refers to any occurrence that intercepts the smooth running of a business and would sometimes attract media attention and/or draw public scrutiny. Such a crisis ranges from poor service to accounting errors, or even malicious acts by competitors just to tarnish the image of your business.

Whatever form the crisis in your business may take, it’s important you familiarize yourself with how to tackle the crisis. This, in turn, can help in the survival of the business. But first, you need to prepare for the crisis by adopting the following tips;

• Pinpoint What May Likely Go Wrong

Get proactive about what may likely go wrong. For different businesses, the list will vary. However, make sure the list is as thorough as it can be. For instance, a floral business can disappoint a customer on a wedding day due to late delivery of orders or last-minute disappointment from the supplier’s end.

Identifying a possible crisis is not enough, it is necessary to take further steps that can help mitigate or completely avoid the crisis. It’s also important to put an effective communication method and procedure in place regarding the anticipated crisis.

• Come up with a Crisis Communication Plan

When you create the communication plan, you should ensure that it targets information on a crisis event. Analyze each segment of your audience and determine the best outlet for communication in the event of a crisis. For instance, you may send mass emails if your audience comprises of your customers, publish press releases if your audience is the press or media, or conduct telephone conferences if the audience is your employees. These are great ways to prepare for effective communication to different audience segments in the event of a crisis.

• Get to Know Your Audience

Actually, this tip is supposed to come before the previous one. You need to get to know your audience. As mentioned above, the audience may be made up of the following; employees and/or board members, customers, the media, politicians. Familiarizing yourself with your audience will help you determine the right mode of communication in the event of a crisis.

• Establish a Crisis Communication Team

In preparation for a crisis in business, another important thing step to adopt is to set up a crisis communication/response team and assign responsibilities to them. Each member of the team should have a specific and clear role to carry out in the event of a crisis. For instance, you can assign one person to conduct telephone conferences to both in-house employees and independent outsourcing contractors.

Daven Michaels is a New York Times Best Selling Author and CEO of premiere global outsourcing company, 123Employee. The company employs hundreds of young bright individuals on three continents. His International event, Beyond Marketing Live! Inspires entrepreneurs to build & grow their business with revolutionary new theories and systems allowing them to design the business and personal lifestyle of their dreams