Chipotle Social Media Crisis Guide
From 2015–2018, seven major foodborne illness outbreaks, including E. coli and salmonella among other pathogens, have been linked to the beloved Chipotle “Mexican Grill”. In 2020, the food chain was ordered by the U.S. Justice Department to pay $25 million in fines for violating food safety policies.
As the reality exists that Chipotle will face another public relations crisis in the future, the company must be prepared to meet this challenge. In the age of social media, companies like Chipotle must be doing a number of things according to our friends at Convince and Convert. First, the company must always keep an ear out for any signs that a crisis might be imminent.
Chipotle does a great job responding to tweets and other social media comments from users. However, having a social media listening tool such as Awario can help Chipotle stay on top of developments that might not be directly in response to their social media posts. It is easier to respond to a public relations crisis when you have ample time to prepare a response.
Next, the company should be able to tell the difference between an angry customer and a real crisis, and everything in between.
There will always be angry customers. When someone is being entirely too unreasonable in their tweets, the company should simply not reply to this behavior. There is no need to wake up the CEO of Chipotle in this case.
A step up from this could be something in terms of an inappropriate or insensitive social media post. Perhaps the new guy in the social media team didn’t do his research and misappropriated a piece of Mexican culture. This could potentially be a social media crisis and there is a need to make corporate leadership aware.
Which brings us to our next point. Create and use a response and alert flowchart. This will allow the team to quickly elevate issues on social media to the appropriate office. Saving time by having this sort of standard operating procedure will allow executives to have time to discuss and approve proposed response statements.
When it comes to publishing a statement, there are only two rules (in my opinion):
- Publish on the platform where the issue was first noted, and then publish to other platforms. This could be the platform where the insensitive tweet was made, or where the video with the unprofessional behavior was uploaded. This will demonstrate that Chipotle is listening and the company is following the situation.
- Be honest and authentic. There is nothing more damaging to one’s reputation like an insincere apology. Consumers will often take additional steps to distance themselves from a brand that makes a dishonest apology. Doing it right the first time is key.
If Chipotle follows these tips, they’ll be sure to manage the next crisis with ease.
Here’s a couple of sources that I used for this post:
