<b> Bold Interactive Inc.

A couple months ago, web hosting company DST Internet essentially shut down. For 10 days, its customers endured a denial of service. To add insult to injury, the communications coming out of DST during and since those 10 days have been a huge case study in How Not to Conduct Crisis Communications.

I recently canceled my service with them, but I still don’t like to see companies fail - especially this bad. So, DST, listen up. I’m giving you some free advice. To Bold readers: pay attention. You don’t want to screw up this bad.

Let’s take a look at three core issues that occurred during the crisis. First we’ll look at what DST did. And then we’ll look at my recommendations:

1. DST style: No communication to customers regarding the denial of service, until the crisis was over. DST customers who wanted information about the outage had to submit support requests and then wait for an answer. There is no phone support - only a phone number for sales. A couple of us called the sales number anyway. We were told that a hard drive had to be ordered - but only after permission was gained from the President of the company.

Why a web hosting company did not have systems in place to have adequate backup hard drives as well as better internal communications is beyond me. Even still, these “answers” did not provide a reason for the outage in the first place.

Nathania Style: Be forthcoming about what is causing the problem and an estimate of how long it will take to fix it. No one likes to admit mistakes, which often causes them to make more mistakes. Denial or a lack of communication is a huge mistake. Fess up and inform your customers of what you’re trying to do to resolve the problems at hand. You’ll lose fewer customers that way.

2. DST Style: Tell customers that their files were saved, even though they weren’t. I don’t think the person who assured me that my files were ok had a clue about the server issues. I think they were just told that everything would be ok when the hard drive came in. Whatever happened, there was a definite breakdown in communication.

Nathania Style: Communicate with clarity to your employees so they can be honest with customers. In order to take care of your customers, you have to empower your employees. During a crisis, it’s easy to want to make it hard on everyone. Blame is thrown around like bird seed at a wedding. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Your company is going to make mistakes.

3. DST Style: To make amends for the denial of service, customers were automatically upgraded to a “better” account - whether they wanted it or not.

After not having access to my purchased web hosting for 10 days, the last thing I wanted from DST was more of what they had to offer. Additionally, when my account comes up for renewal, would I be expected to pay for this upgraded account? It seems that DST wanted to profit from the disservice they provided me.

Nathania Style: Offer a variety of options when making reparations.

DST should have offered a full refund to customers for those who wanted to cancel their accounts. Period. In order to retain customers, they should have offered perks like paid search credits for Google and Yahoo or a few free domain names. Finally, if an upgraded account is going to be offered, it should be clear what customers can expect to pay for that account at renewal time.

Sadly, these three issues were only the tip of the iceberg. DST Internet has some major organizational issues. Their core values are extremely off balance, which makes it difficult for customers to receive the product and employees to do their jobs. I hope they can be bold enough to recognize these issues and work to develop a better organizational design for their company.

How do you handle crisis communication within your company or organization?

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