On April 10, Huawei Cloud experienced a failure. In public relations terms, it encountered a crisis.
No matter how powerful a cloud vendor’s technology is, it is impossible to guarantee that there will be no problems 100% of the time. The key is what to do if something goes wrong? How to conduct crisis public relations?
In the more than 30 years since its establishment, Huawei has encountered too many crises. The biggest crisis was undoubtedly the US ban last year, which can be called a "catastrophe." In responding to crises, Huawei and its founder Ren Zhengfei have demonstrated a very unique approach to crisis public relations, which is worthy of consideration and reference by the industry.
First, the core of crisis public relations is not public relations, but customer-centeredness to solve problems.
When most companies engage in crisis public relations, the biggest misunderstanding is to fall into public relations and struggle with when to respond and how to write a statement. As everyone knows, no matter how quickly the public relations statement is released or how well the content is written, it is not the point. What's the point? It is to solve customer problems and minimize customer losses.
In the US incident, Ren Zhengfei’s core job was to fix loopholes. Everyone must have been deeply impressed by the picture of the plane riddled with holes that Ren Zhengfei showed. "Our goal now is to fill the holes in the plane and withstand the attack of the United States." Ren Zhengfei's approach to patching holes is to be customer-centric and solve problems. , ensuring customers’ business continuity. For example, in the face of the ban on Google's system, Ren Zhengfei mobilized thousands of scientists to fix loopholes, so that users of Huawei mobile phones could continue to experience uninterrupted experience.
The same is true for this failure of Huawei Cloud. The first thing it did was to repair the failure and restore customer business. It is understood that at noon on April 10, the status of all DCS and RDS resources has been restored, and the business of most customers who have reported failures has returned to normal.
If public relations in the face of a crisis is a “skill”, then customer-centeredness, solving problems as soon as possible, drawing inferences from one example and preventing recurrence of the problem is the “Tao”.
The technique is easy, but the Tao is much more difficult, because the Tao comes from the company’s values ??and original intention. The reason why Ren Zhengfei and Huawei do this is that the customer-centric value has been deeply ingrained in their bones. Someone once asked Ren Zhengfei, what is Huawei's management model? Ren Zhengfei replied: There is no model. Someone asked us, what is Huawei’s business philosophy? We have no business ethics. We are customer-centric and must make customers happy.
Second, the way to avoid crises is not to avoid them. Openness and transparency are the best ways to resolve crises.
When many companies encounter negative news or doubts, they subconsciously choose to avoid or remain silent. They often have a sense of luck and think that they can get away with it. However, everyone knows that this kind of behavior is tantamount to covering one's ears and stealing the bell. The more you try to avoid it, the more public attention it will arouse, which will worsen the situation and make it impossible to end.
In the US incident, the biggest doubts Huawei faced were technical backdoors and data intelligence collection. How did Ren Zhengfei do it? He did not avoid anything, but was completely open and transparent. Huawei took the initiative to send an open letter to the American media, inviting them to come and take a look at Huawei. All Huawei executives can answer questions, and Huawei's R&D laboratories and technology conferences are also open to them. Ren Zhengfei, who has always kept a low profile, stepped forward and accepted frequent and continuous interviews with media from various countries. He did not shy away from any sensitive issues and was sincere, rational and candid. Customers and the public around the world got to know Huawei again.
Ren Zhengfei even made an even more unexpected move: licensing 5G patents to American companies in a fair and non-discriminatory manner. "We sincerely want to license this technology, and we will not leave any behind-the-scenes or secrets. We are open and transparent with the licensee, not because we are stupid, but in this way, Huawei's 190,000 employees will face a strong competitor. "No one dares to sleep in." Such openness and transparency are truly unique.
In this Huawei Cloud failure incident, Huawei immediately issued an announcement on its official Weibo to report the failure and repair progress without any concealment or hesitation.
As the saying goes, we all share the same joys and sorrows, and this is especially true when doing business. Under normal circumstances, various manufacturers may look similar, but when you encounter problems or challenges, you often know who is the real one. Trustworthy.
So, to sum up, the crisis public relations approach of Ren Zhengfei and Huawei is actually very simple, that is, they do not use public relations methods to do crisis public relations, and everything returns to the essence of business. We are always customer-centered, so when we encounter a problem, the first thing to do is to solve the problem and minimize customer losses; we always remain transparent, so when we encounter a problem, we will not shirk the blame and hide it, but face the problem head-on and Be open and transparent.
That’s all.