A restaurant group's marketing director messages a PR agency at eleven at night. A video is circulating, a journalist has emailed asking for comment by nine in the morning, and nobody internally knows what to say.
That enquiry is worth more than the agency's next three new business pitches, and it is sitting in a contact form until Monday.
Monday before
The agency's website has a contact form and an office number. The Sunday night enquiry is read at nine on Monday. By then the business has appointed someone else, because the journalist's deadline was nine.
Wednesday before
A second crisis enquiry arrives at seven in the evening. Someone sees it on their phone, forwards it to a director, who is at dinner. It is picked up at ten, by which time the business has posted a statement of its own that makes things worse.
Friday before
The agency reviews the week and counts two significant lost opportunities, neither of which appeared in any pipeline report, because they were never logged as enquiries at all.
What changes
The agency publishes a crisis page with an out-of-hours route, explains how it responds and what the first hours look like, and adds an assistant that captures the situation and escalates immediately. Urgent routing follows the thinking in after-hours emergency triage.
Enquirer: We have a situation escalating online and a journalist deadline in the morning. Assistant: The crisis page explains how the team responds out of hours and who is on call. So they can call you back now, could you share your name and number, the nature of the situation in one line, whether any media have already been in touch and what deadline you are working to? Please do not share confidential detail here.
Monday after
The Sunday enquiry is escalated within minutes. A director calls back that evening, the journalist deadline is met and the agency has a retained client by Tuesday.
Wednesday after
The second enquiry is captured with the deadline visible, so it is triaged ahead of routine work rather than sitting behind it.
Friday after
Looking back over the week, both crisis enquiries were handled and one became a retained client. They existed before, but nobody could see them.
Capture without commentary
The assistant must never comment on the situation, suggest a response or reassure. It captures facts and escalates, because the wrong word in writing can itself become part of the story.
Confidentiality
Businesses in crisis are cautious about what they put in writing. Saying explicitly that detail should wait for the call, and only capturing what is needed to escalate, builds confidence.
Retainers follow crises
A business that has been through a crisis rarely goes back to having no support. Crisis work is the strongest route into ongoing retainers, which otherwise stall as described in PR enquiries from businesses that want coverage next week.
Urgency in other sectors
Emergency routing works the same way wherever the stakes are high and the hour is wrong, as described in emergency pet enquiries and where to send them, and smaller clients arrive with the patterns in local businesses shopping for their first marketing agency.
Getting started
Publish a crisis page with an out-of-hours route, and capture and escalate at any hour. SpideyChat for marketing agencies answers from your published pages. Try SpideyChat on your own site, or read about capture on the features page.