Brazen! Voucher Cloning Case Happened Again!

Life in I-SPA during my internship period was non-stop and there wasn’t a minute to spare. So today I would like to reflect on issues about “fake voucher” incidents that have been raised recently.

In essence, we ran a few roadshow events to promote our resort. In the roadshow event, consumers not only are able to get more information/details about our spa, but also they are offered value vouchers for their benefits.

However, recently we find out the fake voucher case happened again! But this time after we realized the issue and after further investigation, we directly took action and dealt with it. For the reason that, few months before, this “fake voucher” incident once happened and based on the result of the investigation, there were almost a thousand and above fake vouchers found to be sold out. The company that committed the fraud had around 10 salesmen and one of them garnered more than RM7000 in profit!

The news coverage on Sin Chew Daily

Therefore, this time when we find out this issue was happening again, the management team went directly to make a police report and once everything was confirmed, we resumed to getting the word out online for alerting purposes so our customers would be aware and also in order to minimize the chances of the public getting deceived. We also status out how to differentiate real & fake coupons as well as to directly create a system on the official website for our customers to verify their vouchers via barcode.

So how this experience has influenced my perspective on public relation practice? What I learned through the experience is that a practiced approach is needed when in comes to resolving an issue. In this sense, to make it simple I will use Jaques’s theory to explain it; he uses an acronym to highlight the four core elements, which is “DO IT” – Definition, Objective setting, Intended outcomes, Tactics.

Definition – Define the issue and the impact on the organization. Basically, the focus attention will be to monitor and analyze the issue and also the need to think about what is the worst-case scenario just to be safe.

Objective Setting – Is it strategic to the organization’s goals? An overarching objective that can be implemented through various action steps.

Intended Outcomes – the key step is needed to ensure that the intended outcomes need to be achieved (“What we plan to make happen”), rather than desired outcomes (“What we would like to see happen”). Basically, it is more likely to have a strategy decision and develop an issue management communication plan and also to consider timing as well.

Tactics – assign responsibility for action with strategy development and measure made measurement about the results. Evaluate and determine future strategy and learn from success and failure.

Issues management can be perceived as a form of risk management – intended to reduce the greater risks caused by inaction in not addressing change. Last but not least, I believe that no organization can simultaneously manage every issue or crisis. Consequently, companies can develop procedures to identify and sort out the issues of primary concern to their current operation (Jones & Chase, 1979)

Feel free to comment and share unexpected things happened during your internship with me! :)
WanYing