Damned if you do or don’t communicate in a crisis? Ask Optus.
As the Optus 000 crisis continues to snowball, company CEO Stephen Rue is throwing everything at presenting a credible public face, but he has a massive problem.
Many of us don’t trust his source information.
Compared to its previous large-scale public crises involving outages and cyber attacks, Optus has done a complete 180 in its communication.
Where the previous boss was deafeningly silent in her public response, Stephen Rue has started a pattern of daily CEO updates. Under enormous pressure, he’s attempting to be clear and measured, with a focus on ongoing transparency.
However, the emerging details have revealed contradictions, gaps and processes not followed, making it difficult for a traumatised Australian public to believe what they’re hearing.
The CEO has an almost impossible task to find a foothold of trust on extremely shaky ground.
Optus’ messaging challenges include:
No apparent communication with customers at the time of the outage.
An initial prepared speech by the CEO that was shocking in its out-of-the-blue bluntness, confirming that the “technical failure has now been rectified” before the revelation of loss of life and subsequent apology.
A public perception (acknowledging that the facts are still being established) that Optus chose to “dump” news of the 000 failure and its disastrous consequences at a late Friday afternoon media conference without first communicating with relevant authorities.
We’ll be talking and writing about this extraordinary series of events for many years. In the meantime, Optus must demonstrate relentless honesty, extreme tenacity and genuine change if it’s to have any hope of surviving this crisis.
Here’s one of my comments on Channel 10 news: Optus 000 Crisis
