When I saw someone on Twitter describe a radio appearance as a ‘masterclass crisis interview’ I simply had to listen.
I was particularly keen to hear it because this high praise was for someone who had just been interviewed on The Today Programme on Radio 4, which can be one of the more challenging inquisitions for a spokesperson.
The interviewee in question was Benny Higgins, the chief executive of Tesco Bank, which had halted online payments for current account customers after money was fraudulently taken from 20,000 accounts.
So there was little doubt the company was in full crisis comms mode.
But while there were some good parts to the interview (I have posted the link to it at the bottom) this was no ‘masterclass’.
When we blogged recently about learning points from the Samsung crisis media management situation we stressed the importance of apologising.
Now, Mr Higgins apologised but it was somewhat buried.
It came in response to the first question when he tried to take control of the interview by saying ‘could I say three things’. The apology was at the end of the third or those three points – nearly two minutes into the interview - and could easily have been missed by listeners.
He said: “The final thing I would say which is very important is that any financial loss which results from this fraudulent activity will be borne by the bank and customers are not at financial risk, but we do apologise for the disruption and inconvenience they experienced.”
The apology should have been the first thing he said. His first two points were about putting the incident in context and showing what action the bank had taken, which are important things to get across, but they should not have come before saying ‘sorry’ to the bank's customers.
On our crisis communications training we use the acronym CARE, which stands for Compassion, Action, Reassurance and Examples. And the compassion doesn’t come first just to make the nifty acronym work – it should be the first thing you say in your interviews and statements.
Apologising makes organisations appear human and customers feel you understand the severity of what has happened, that they are utmost in your thoughts, and that you appreciate the impact it has had on them.
But that apology also needs to sound genuine and sincere.
Apologising for ‘disruption and inconvenience’ sounds heavily scripted, almost robotic, and it has been said so many times before by spokespeople in similar situations it’s almost clichéd.
Mr Higgins would have been better with a more empathetic sounding apology using his own language to personalise it and bring it to life.
Later in the interview, Mr Higgins also veered perilously close to providing a ‘no comment’ answer.
Asked how much Tesco would have to pay back to customers he simply said: “That’s not a number that we are prepared to discuss right now.”
That may be the case, but the answer sounded unnecessarily defensive. He would have been much better saying something like: “We are still trying to get all that information together at the moment so I don’t currently have that figure and wouldn’t like to speculate, but…” and then go back to one of his key points or to reinforcing his apology to customers who had been impacted.
That was a question which was relatively easy to predict and good preparation would have involved the development of a much better response.
Unsurprisingly, the journalist was not satisfied with his answer and, after an awkward silence, put the question to him again, albeit phrased slightly differently, and his second attempt at a response was in fairness much better, but it should not have been needed.
There were, however, parts of the interview I thought were good. Mr Higgins sounded calm, assured and factual throughout and was clearly keen to get across the message that customers were not at financial risk as a result of the fraud.
‘Every little helps’ as they say, but it was still someway short of being a masterclass.
Media First are media and communications training specialists with over 30 years of experience. We have a team of trainers, each with decades of experience working as journalists, presenters, communications coaches and media trainers.
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