What a week I had last week at my internship! Working at Ezeatm has been an experience so far, involving a range of tasks aimed at improving our reputation with our customers. In the past year the company has seen a huge decline in reputation due to a change of management and poor management prior to last year. The company have slowly been rebuilding their services and how they deliver them, however it seems when crisis strikes, the last year's hard work has been erased!
Last Thursday, the 'switch' network that connects all of Ezeatm's ATMs to the various financial institutions it interacts with broke down and completely shut down all of the company's ATMs around Australia. Not only was the company affected, however competitors were affected as well. In addition to this some Eftpos providers went down, causing an influx of customer phone calls and complaints.
As part of the marketing team, it was damage control time. I was firstly called into a meeting with the Managing Director and the Operations Manager to be briefed on the actual cause of the problem and the best actions to take in terms of communicating with our customers and various stakeholders.
After this I was asked to draft an email blast to all customers on our database to inform them of the downtime and the steps Ezeatm were taking to rectify the situation. In the meantime, I was assisting the administration staff with receiving customer calls and explaining the current situation.
What I had running through my throughout the day was to ensure that the company is seeming to be transparent in the way they are approaching this crisis. Be honest with the customers, explain that it is a problem and the company is doing everything they possibly can to turn the situation around. As soon as I sent the email blast was sent out, the customer calls eased. I truly believe that by keeping people informed it improves the reputation of the company and allows crises to be minimised.
At the end of the day, as soon as the problem had been repaired, I drafted a second email blast which included that the system was up and running again, steps each customer had to follow to reboot their ATM and an apology for any inconvenience caused.
The majority of people enquiring about this issue were calm when they phoned and no one was angry at the situation. I believe this is because everyone was kept informed about the situation and as any new information cam to hand it was sent out immediately.
Overall I was proud of the way I handled to crisis under the guidance of my Managing Director and felt that the whole day was a strong example of team work and effective communication.
For more information on Ezeatm's network provider First Data, please see the link below.
https://www.firstdata.com/en_au/home.html
Rebecca
2 comments:
Most crisis can’t be foreseen and always strikes unpredictably. However, you have responded to the crisis immediately and appropriately, a very good job you have done there!
This incident proved that the lessons we have learnt could be applied directly in the real world. I remembered reading a journal which it stated that crisis is not always a threat, but an opportunity; this theory could be applied to the company that you are working for as well.
Through sending emails and keeping them informed about the downtime, it will reflect the transparency of the company as well as giving customers a false sense of control. By doing so, customers will feel relief as they perceived that they are in control of the situation and will be more loyal to the company that they felt assured with. This will create a loyal customer base as well as business opportunities for the company.
Looking forward for your next blog. All the best!
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