Media Minute: When an apology isn’t enough
Media Minute: When an apology isn’t enough
By Jerry Brown, APR
www.JerryBrownPR.com
Give CEO Gerry Cahill of Carnival Cruise Lines credit for stepping forward to apologize in person for the horrible conditions endured by the passengers of the Carnival Triumph.
And give the company credit for refunding passengers’ fares, paying their expenses to get home, giving them cash on top of that and offering them a credit for a future cruise.
But everything I’ve read so far indicates Carnival has fallen short on one important count: They haven’t told us what they’re doing to prevent similar disasters in the future.
The Triumph is the second Carnival ship disabled by fire in the past three years. An engine room caught fire on Carnival’s Splendor in November 2010, forcing passengers to endure unflushable toilets and other conditions similar to those found aboard the Triumph, also disabled by an engine-room fire.
Even without the earlier incident, Carnival omitted a key step when it comes to crisis management and crisis communication.
They acknowledged the problem and apologized. But fixing the problem and telling us how they’ll prevent it from happening again are vitally important. They haven’t done that yet.
That’s my two cents’ worth. What’s yours?
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Listen to Jerry’s Tips for Telling Your Story every Tuesday at 11:05 a.m., Mountain Time, on the Experience Pros Radio Show, KLZ 560AM in Denver or at www.560thesource.com on the Internet. Missed it on the air? Listen to the archives. And check out Jerry’s new content-focused blog at www.JerryBrownPR.com.
Tags: Carnival Cruise, JerryBrownPR, media minute, Media Minute: When an apology isn’t enough, monday morning media minute
February 18th, 2013 at 1:17 pm
Great reminder, Jerry.
Lots of research I’ve seen in the past shows that companies that do what you suggest, 1) make a mistake, then 2) connect, apologize, and promise correction, 3) correct, and 4) connect again to explain the correction are rated much higher by consumers than companies that don’t make mistakes. The Tylenol recall a few years (decades?) back is a great example.
Counter intuitive at one level. Doesn’t seem fair an error free company wouldn’t be very much preferred.
But that’s how we humans seem to be wired.