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Loading ...I was on the Amtrak train from Hudson, near where I live in upstate New York bound for NYC yesterday afternoon. We’d left at 3:20 on time for a 5:55 arrival at Penn Station. At 4pm the conductor came back to Business Class and asked all of us to remove our earphones and bluetooth devices as the train slowed. “The northbound train has struck a trespasser just south of Poughkeepsie. We’ll have to wait about an hour, hour and a half while they get the ambulance.”
With that he disappeared. I tweeted what happened and got a direct message from Toddr who was traveling on the opposite northbound train.
The conductor came back, said it would be longer, they had to get a new crew. He didn’t want to guess but figure another hour. With that he left to the back of the train. He returned in ten minutes with cookies and water. “I went to the train behind us and got some snacks for you all.” He continued to walk through the entire train passing his supplies to everyone.
After the second hour I asked how likely it would be I would make an 8:00 curtain to see Jane Fonda in her play 33 Variations. “It depends, we should have a straight-shot in but if there are other trains in our way – we share tracks with MetroNorth – it will be longer.”
After the third hour, I called Telecharge who graciously let me out of the ticket. The conductor returned again to say there were too many conflicting stories to update, they were doing the best they could to get us through the mess.
He updated us for the following hour until we again were bound for NYC at 7:48pm. He came back, “Well, I guess you can see we’re moving.” People told him how grateful they were for his good humor about it all.
“This wasn’t so bad – I’ve been through much worse, like the time in Boston. It’s different when you have cars at 45 degree angles tipping toward a big drop to a river. This was just like a derailment.”
Twenty minutes later we stopped, after five minutes he came on the PA, “Folks sorry, we’re the in the dark why we’re stopped as well. Once I know something, you’ll know something.” We looked at each other shrugged and returned to our iPhones and laptops. It had been five hours we had been on the train already.
I was struck with how important crisis management is in every job. You can’t train for every disaster or circumstance but the people you hire make all the difference. Our conductor exhibited my Seven Tips For Managing A Crisis Or Disaster.
Contrast that to the debacles of Domino’s burying their heads after the YouTube video in NC surfaced, the Popeye’s Chicken franchisees closing after they ran out of chicken or the KFC Oprah free chicken promotion last week.
Here are my Seven Tips For Managing A Crisis Or Disaster:
- Put yourself in your customers’ shoes
- Be proactive. Alert people as soon as you know something is wrong.
- Don’t sugar coat but don’t catastrophize. Just the facts.
- Tell what you know, don’t hypothesize.
- Keep people updated with status.
- If appropriate, give the steps necessary to restore normalcy.
- Respond to questions with truth.
What potential crisis or disaster could hit your business that may have happened before? A death in a family? Someone injured at work? A fire? Earthquake?
The more you teach the general ways to handle a crisis, the more you’ll make it a stepping stone instead of a cliff. Something your customers and employees will be able to get through hopefully saying, “That wasn’t so bad.”
