Alive HR

I was  on the train, chatting over a glass of wine in the observation lounge with my new BFF Sean when a putrid, acrid smell overtook the car.  “Brakes,” we decided, wrinkling our noses, not attaching much significance to the odor–or to the rapid slowing of the train; after all, trains stop frequently for reasons that are rarely explained.

In this case, however, explanation quickly followed.  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention,’ the voice announced,  ‘we have stopped because the train has hit something, possibly a pedestrian,  and we need to see what happened. We’ll keep you posted.’*

Immediately the car buzzed with alarm–and anger and indignation. “Why would you tell us that?!?” a distressed chorus sprung up.

A fellow traveler declared that her whole trip was ruined. Waiting for more information, passengers repeatedly and angrily attacked the tentative nature of the original announcement.  If you’re not sure, they said, then tell us the train hit *something* and you’re checking it out. When you know for sure what happened, tell us you regret to inform us that you have (tragically but unavoidably) hit a human being; and apologetically let us know our travels will unfortunately be delayed for many hours because of the ensuing investigation.

But don’t casually tell us that maybe we might have possibly hit someone. Thanks for your candor, but we’re just human; we feel terrible about what may have happened, and we don’t know how to deal with the ambiguity.

Ultimately, we learned through the grapevine the train did in fact strike and kill a woman walking her dog. This was later substantiated in news reports but was never officially announced by train officials during the trip.  We were delayed for five  hours while the police conducted their crime scene investigation and a new engineer and conductor were bussed in.

It was fascinating  just to sit back and watch events and reactions unfold. For example,  in addition to the general level of anguish and stress, I saw two groups of people who were especially angry and disgruntled:

• Smokers (because we were in the middle of nowhere and it was pitch dark, they weren’t allow to disembark for a smoke break).
• Travelers whose final destination was the next stop, a mere 20 minutes away in normal times–but a very frustrating lifetime away when forbidden to leave the train. In contrast, folks with more distant destinations were sanguine. I found the behavioral economics quite interesting; after all, we were all delayed by the same 5 hours, but the inconvenience was perceived very differently through the lens of one’s destination.

Neither concern was addressed very effectively by train staff.  “We have more important things to worry about,” I heard a representative impatiently tell passengers.  That is true, on a literal, black-or-white level. But that doesn’t mean the passengers’ concerns should be trivialized or dismissed. Customers are still customers and if their needs (practical or emotional) aren’t satisfied, they probably will choose alternate means of transportation in the future.

Also interesting was the cafe care attendant’s comment the next morning. He mentioned that between the 10:15 p.m. accident and midnight cafe closing,  he  completely sold out of all alcohol.

“People’s response to stress,” he shrugged.  People were freaking out and they tried to calm themselves. Another sign: some passengers were up til 2 a.m. either on their cell phones or chattering to each other or tramping back and forth from one car to another, preventing their fellow passengers from sleeping; train representatives were not around to help deal with such a trivial issue. It was a trivial issue under the circumstances, but one that meant that passengers had a more miserable night than necessary, in addition to the delay.

The cafe attendant also said that he’d been working for the transportation carrier for less than twelve months, and this was his third pedestrian fatality in that short time frame. I was blown away. It happens that often?! It happens that often, and yet responses are seemingly ad-libbed, made up as you go along?  Shouldn’t there be decision trees, protocols, disaster response scripts tested with trial audiences?

Here are some lessons I learned:

1. Regardless of one’s role or industry, bad stuff happens. So let’s anticipate likely crises and plan our responses to manage the situation and further our mission. Obviously, we want plans to prevent disasters whenever possible and but also need plans to react to emergencies that occur outside of our control. If you have to give minor bad news frequently (such as  train delays), it might help to have a tried-and-true script. By the same token, if you need to deliver devastating news occasionally (such as fatalities), scripts will help so that you don’t have to extemporaneously come up with magic, calming words while under emotional duress.  If the exact nature of possible crises is hard to anticipate, perhaps your organization can devise templates with fill-in-the blanks fields.

2. Remember your other customers, the 99%,  during times of crisis and disaster. Their routine needs might suddenly hold less priority to you when distracted by life-and-death issues. That’s not the case for the bulk of your customers; their routine needs don’t necessarily disappear despite their empathy for the extraordinary circumstances.  In addition to their practical needs continuing, emotional needs probably skyrocket. Plan ahead to can compensate  for the increased need to calm and soothe while ensuring routine customer service.

What crisis communication plans do you have in place? Have they been tested? How did they work; what did you learn? I’m curious….

*I have put this in single quotes; it is not a direct quote as I didn’t write it down at the time. But it’s pretty darn close.