Crisis Communication

At some point in time, nearly any company can come face to face with a crisis situation which involves communication or in many instances, miscommunication. In some cases this could be rumor control and/or response, negative press or even breakdowns in crisis communication response. Whatever the situation, even the smallest of communication crisis can overwhelm even the strongest of companies. Crisis communication involves winning as well as keeping the confidence and trust of key factors (media, employees, management, shareholders, stakeholder, suppliers, etc) when things suddenly happen to go arry. It is about developing strategic plans of action, communication counseling and training in communications with key personnel so that each company can anticipate and respond quickly and efficiently in the face of a crisis situation to avoid undue harm to the organization as a whole. In researching consulting firms which handle crisis for business, it was found that they are many and varied in the types of services which they provide. For example, on a search at MSN.com, typing in the phrase "Crisis Communication Consulting Firm" produced nearly 252,000 results. The same held true with the phrase "Business Crisis Consulting Firms" with results of over 253,000 results. Granted, many of these are just references to firms or web pages listing firms of this nature, it is still a very overwhelming number. Dialing it down a little further, it can be found that there are several firms out there that promote themselves in dealing with either communication crisis or business crisis, though typically these firms will include both services. For example, 2C Consulting, Crisis and Continuity Consulting Services (http://www.2c-consulting.com/services.htm), offers a vast array of services to their clients which include: Risk Assessment, Crisis Management Plan Development, Crisis Communication Management and Planning, Personnel Awareness Training and Development, as