Business crisis. It’s a scary and daunting experience that creeps into the minds of every business owner. You wake up feeling energised to start your day. After all your morning routines, you went straight to your laptop, opened your email, and did your usual routine. Suddenly, a storm hit as if it wanted to purposely ruin your day. Not wanting to be interrupted, you’d hope a power outage wouldn’t happen. But it did, and now you’re in a state of panic. Now you’re left wondering, “What am I supposed to do during a business crisis like this?”

Business Crisis Is Inevitable—And That’s Completely Normal

When things don’t go as planned, sometimes we tend to feel discouraged, anxious, stressed, and even hopeless—having a hard time bouncing back on our feet. 

A very good example was when the coronavirus pandemic hit the world by storm, primarily causing a lot of concerns about our health but also having a huge impact on most businesses and economies in general. It was something that we didn’t expect to happen so quickly that it turned most businesses around, closing down factories, offices, and stores, and for some, permanently losing their businesses. 

You can’t do anything but adapt to changes and find new ways to cope and bounce your business back into the market. But some things happen because of the decisions and mistakes that we make in running our business. Even when we give it our best shot, give our clients the best, and produce quality products and services, there are still issues we encounter along the way. 

So, what do you do and how do you react when things go wrong outside and within your business?

Three Steps to Handling a Business Crisis

1. Take ownership and responsibility

Back in 2017, Andy Rubin, the founder and CEO of a smartphone company, owned up to the company’s mistake of accidentally sending a lot of customers’ confidential information to strangers. He acknowledged the mistakes, took responsibility, and apologised to all the affected clients, giving them a free one-year subscription to an identity theft protection service.

This is a concrete example of how you should react when you make a mistake: listening to your client’s complaints, acknowledging the error, owning responsibility, and taking appropriate action to ensure your customers will not churn after the incident. 

This would save you from losing your clients and your reputation from bad reviews that your potential customers would see.

2. Don’t feed your customers with your problems

Things have been piling up in your office. You have a lot of workloads, a lot of plans for your company, things to delegate, and much more. Sometimes, you just feel like sharing it with other people just for the sake of unburdening yourself with things to do, even with your clients, especially when you’re close to them. 

While this seems to be okay and acceptable, sharing your problems with your customers is not a good idea for your business facade as well as your image as a professional. We may not even be aware of the battles that the customers are dealing with, so sharing yours would likely add to the negativity they feel.

It’s best to share your problems with the people you trust, like your family members, relatives, friends, or even your life coach.

3. Learn something from your last mistake

They say that your experience is the best teacher. However, some say that the best teacher is your last mistake. Why? When you commit a mistake, you’ll most likely do something about it, right? This is especially true in a work setting or business. 

As aforementioned, the company made a mistake in sending personal information. So instead of pointing fingers at team members, the company should accept that mistakes are inevitable, take responsibility, and do something about it.

How you deal with all these mistakes will make you grow as a boss, an entrepreneur, or a business owner.  You will eventually learn from your personal experience to ensure that you won’t commit the same mistakes again.

Business Crisis: Conclusion

Whenever you find yourself struggling with a business crisis, you’ll likely choose another path or make another decision. Growing your business requires you to be patient, not just with your team but also with yourself. 

We learn not only from the past mistakes we made within the business but also from other people’s experiences. The ability to accept that things will go wrong one way or another is part of running your business. Adapting to these circumstances is another thing, and doing something about them would make your business grow stronger, better, and more successful.