Lack of much-needed compassion leaves bank’s communications falling flat
Having a debit or credit card charge declined is both frustrating and embarrassing no matter who you are or what you’re buying, something we would expect a bank to be aware of.
That’s why, when we spotted the below email from Chase bank, we knew we had to share it as a particularly bad example of crisis communications:
The natural reaction is to assume one of two things is at work here, and neither one leaves a good impression of Chase as an organization. The utter lack of compassion creates the appearance that Chase either:
1) Has company leadership so out of touch that it has no idea how having charges declined for no reason makes its customers feel, or…
2) Simply doesn’t care
While we have no way of knowing if either of these are actually true, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that customers who received this email will be thinking along the same lines, and that means many little dings on Chase’s reputaiton, dings nobody in the financial sector can afford right now.
We repeat this often in our blogs because it’s incredibly important, and overlooked 90% of the time when it comes to crisis communications – you absolutely MUST show the Three C’s, Confidence, Competence, and Compassion, or you risk not only failing to get the message across, but also incurring further damage.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com