During business operations, companies will always be at the risk of facing a crisis that may threaten them to lose their market share. Thus, the management must always be prepared for such events and come up with ways to address them. This can be achieved through, for instance, setting up a crisis management team that will come up with recommendations that can be used to resolve the situation and ensure that normalcy is resumed. However, at times, the management gets it wrong in handling a crisis in their organization, which worsens the situation already being experienced.
In early 2017, United Airlines experienced a crisis that made the company's sales to drop. The crisis, nicknamed "The leggings scandal" happened when the employees of the airline barred two female passengers from boarding the plane because of the leggings that they wore. The situation did not get well with the other passengers as they were surprised by how the airline employees treated their customers. One of the passengers tweeted about the incident, and the social media erupted with the news. Hashtags to boycott the airline due to its ultimate discrimination started trending and damaged the reputation of the airline adversely. The company responded through a series of tweets, where it confirmed the incident, but their reasoning was not satisfactory. They explained that what the two female passengers had gone through was the standard procedure at the airline. This kind of reasoning annoyed most people who were concerned about the crisis. The management of the airline did admit that they did not handle the crisis in the right manner (Guan, 2018). A few weeks after the crisis, another video showing a customer being dragged out of a United Airlines flight emerged. It was revealed that the customer was dragged out to give way for the company's own employees (Guan, 2018). This incident further damaged the company's reputation. Within the first 24 hours after the incident, the company is reported to have lost $800 million in total value.
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When a company is hit by a crisis, social media can be used in managing the said crisis and contain the situation. However, the way a firm communicates can also determine its overall effect on the company's ability to manage a crisis. A genuine response done swiftly can have a significant impact on managing a crisis (Busch, 2019). The converse will also apply. Though the company's CEO Munoz made some follow-up tweets and other statements on the company's website, the damage had already been done. The first response on the matter seemed to justify why the customers were mishandled instead of admitting the mistake. This was a big mistake on the part of the company, and they paid a heavy price for that. Ultimately, this is an excellent example of crisis management through the use of social medial that went wrong.
References
Busch, S. (2019). The impact of corporate social responsibility scandals on the company's financial performance. Theseus. https://www.theseus.fi/handle/10024/228021
Guan, Z. (2018). Strategic crisis communication on social media: message strategy from issue selling perspective. PACIS 2018 Proceedings, 328. https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2018/328
Appendix
More information on how United Airlines Inc. used social media, specifically Twitter, in attempts to manage the crisis that had occurred in 2017 can found on the company's website or Twitter account.
