Sunday, January 15, 2012

What can we learn from the Costa Concordia incident?


Image from www.cruisecritic.com
I am not an 'avid cruiser', I have not even been on a cruise but I have been fascinated with the tragic event unfolding off the Tuscan coast of Italy.  If you have been living under a rock or been drowning in the US GOP Primary coverage, the Costa Concordia is a cruise liner that ran aground and partially capsized Friday night causing a complete evacuation.  At post time there were 5 fatalities and 17 souls still missing.  A more detailed account of the event can be found at http://www.cruisecritic.com/news/news.cfm?ID=4710.
My fascination has had me surfing the web for information about the event and I realized that emergency managers, risk managers, and crisis professionals could learn a tremendous amount from this event.

Crisis Communication

Web Presence:
The company’s voice in this event has been amazingly silent.  The company’s website has been over loaded and unable to respond.  This shows the perfect opportunity for ‘Thin Sites.’  Thin sites are websites that replaces a company’s graphically and media intense landing page with a page that is mainly text based and a platform for a message about the crisis.  Costa should want to be the source of truth for this event as to maintain customer trust if at all possible, if customers don’t hear from them or can’t get to the material then the void will be filled else where.

The Message:
One of the first thing most of mentors in Crisis Communications have always said decide on a message and get it out there.  Even though it sounds cliché the sentiment of compassion is what the public and customers want to here followed quickly by a sense of urgency to discover and fix whatever is wrong.  We are seeing very little of this from Costa.  A matter of fact this event is getting worse if you read posts of passengers that say Costa has not been able to assist them and won’t even help them secure a change of clothes.  An ideal response to this event would be ‘The safety of Costa’s passengers is at the forefront of the Costa’s mission while begin an exhaustive investigation to understand the events on the Costa Concordia our primary focus is to support and provide for welfare of our passengers.’ That statement should be followed up by assigning a slew of employees to the evacuated passengers and make sure they have the essentials:
·        Food
·        Clothing
·        A nice place to stay
·        Access to their Embassy
·        Transportation Home
Furthermore the family of the fatalities should each get a personal liaison to help them with what ever arrangements they need.  These actions are not only the right thing to do but they are the first step at restoring the Costa’s image in a service industry.

Rumor Control:
Finally, there has been a lot of speculation about several things ranging from the ship’s course to the evacuation drill schedule and we still continue to hear very little concerning the events from Costa.  A key part in the intermediate and extended phase of a crisis is rumor control.  If the major player is not speaking then the rumors will abound, like they are in the Costa Concordia event.  If the message was 'We are investigating the event in full cooperation with the authorities' that at least dispels or delays some rumors.  Finally, with out infuriating too many attorneys, if the facts are bad and obvious, acknowledge them and then fix what ever caused so it won’t happen again.

The Victim’s Message
We are all used to seeing the traditional victim’s story as they describe what happened to them to a reporter and we only heard it at the discretion of the media outlet.  Well those were the simple times, today’s victim will share their story on YouTube as the video they take in the life boat.

As we define how we message and how we respond we must take into account that the victim’s voice is much louder and I personally believe that is a great thing.  We will learn more from these individuals to better our response in the future.

Risk Management

Now, Italian laws surrounding negligence probably differ slightly from US but some core tenants exist.  First, were there policies and procedures in place that should prevent some if not all of the chaos.  Companies should walk a fine line between empowering the employees and protecting the customers.  The ship’s course is coming under such scrutiny to the point that staff are speaking about being too close to shore, policies should be in place saying courses should be followed as planned, this is no different than in a hospital that a patient should be treated according to the standard of care.  It also seems that safety was an after thought as to when the evacuation drill was scheduled, 5 pm Saturday a full 24 hours from embarkation.  Most American Cruise Ships conduct the “muster drill” in the first hours of the cruise.  If it is policy to schedule drills when it is convenient that creates an environment that doesn’t make safety a priority.


Reading the comments and reviews on line one comment sticks out from an avid cruiser “Don’t rush to blame the cruise company.  I agree it was not the CEO or policies that steered this 4,000 passenger mega-ship into a reef, it was a man.  This man is now in the custody of the Italian Carbinieri on charges of manslaughter, among other things.  Where the criticism of a company like Costa can come to play in a disaster that resulted from errant decision making, is how they responded and prepared for a disaster. This company has a 150+ year history and it’s operation and market share are in dire jeopardy because of a human error.  We don’t know if Costa has a crisis or disaster response plan but if they don’t they will in the near future.

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