There is no doubt that the Airbnb vacation rental horror story has been a PR disaster for the company. As I’m sure this isn’t the first time an AirBnb renter has had property stolen or damaged while renting, I am surprised that this was not handled better. While some may be blaming this on the AirBnb PR team or lack thereof, this is not a “PR” issue. It’s a crisis management issue that is inevitable at many companies. While many were anticipating that this would happen to AirBnb sooner or later, it seems that there was no action plan from the leadership team. A few lessons can be learned from what happened:
1. Respond Immediately
Time is critical in these situations and something must be done immediately. The fact that the situation with EJ has not been fully taken care of for over a month is ridiculous. The second this happened a community manager from the AirBnb team should have alerted the co-founders and they should have addressed it immediately with a plan of action. AirBnb attorneys and public relations staff should have been fully aware of the extent of the situation and the possible effects this may have on their community. San Francisco police and other regulators and associations for the city that might have been able to help should be consulted. They should have been proactive, responding to the victim publicly a month ago when her original blog was posted. They should have given the victim a consistent point of contact, seen her in person, put her up in a hotel, etc.
When the recent earthquake hit Japan, senior managers were told to stock up on food and supplies at their stores immediately. Corporate and retail employees were given immediate assistance and told they could sleep at their stores. The head of Apple International HR and of Japan Retail spent the night with their employees at the retail stores. No one could have predicted that catastrophe, but Apple leadership handled it impeccably.
2. Have a Long Term Response
The problem will not just go away. While AirBnb reported that they doubled their customer service staff, the lack of customer service reps did not cause this problem. Their response was also unclear – they could have had one customer service rep before this incident and upped it to two. This long-term response (a response a month after the incident) is neither clear nor helpful. Trying to improve security and institute some kind of insurance policy protection for renters will help future victims. They had no clear or concise long-term action plan in regards to the problem at hand.
3. How to Handle the Press
A “no comment” can only hurt you. The second a reader sees that a company refused to comment or did not comment in time, they will think that it has something to hide.
Do not lie. You must be absolutely truthful when speaking to the press, your users and investors. Anything but and you will lose their trust. In this case, we have the victim to fact-check AirBnb and it came back to bite them. Their poor management of their relationship with the victim (example: telling her to take down her blog) made her feel like she needed to speak out again.
How companies respond during a crises really makes you think about whether you want to do business with them. Hopefully AirBnb has learned their lesson this time around.