Clearly, Wine Spectator magazine knows a lot about wine.
But when it comes to understanding how to maintain their online reputation and avert a potential crisis, as of right now, they are completely clueless.
For the last few days all of the M. Shanken websites - Cigar Aficionado, Wine Spectator, and Food Arts - have been completely down and unaccessible on the web.
When most websites go down there are back-ups to restore the site in a matter of hours. But whatever happened at Wine Spectator must have been huge, because not only has the site been down since last Friday, it's expected that it will be down for many days still to come.
Wine Spectator's response is a textbook lesson in how not to communicate when facing a crisis online. The statement on the website is:
We're sorry - we are experiencing technical difficulties. We are working to correct the problem and will be back online as soon as possible.
Thank you for your patience, and we apologize for the inconvenience.
In addition to the website, evidently some Wine Spectator subscribers received an email notifying them of the problem. Here's how they addressed it in the email:
Dear WineSpectator.com visitor,
As you may know by now, our website is currently unavailable, due to technical difficulties.
We anticipate the site to be functional by week’s end.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and will e-mail you again when the site is up.
Sincerely,
WineSpectator.com
Clearly Wine Spectator has no understanding of how important tonality is when communicating with customers. For a company who's business it is to communicate via the written word, not one word on the website or email is personable, honest, or re-assuring.
It's as if a machine spit out an error message.
But brands aren't machines.
The critical thing Wine Spectator is missing, is that their website is more than just a brochure for their magazine. It's a web service. And because of this, they should be a lot smarter and more concerned about how they communicate.
When web services have catastrophic failures like this one, the ramifications can be huge. Web services must have a higher level of commitment to service and security.
Wine Spectator's servers store the credit card information of thousands of online subscribers. Thousands of people have paid a monthly fee for premium services on Wine Spectator.com including using the site to store all the data about your wine collection.
So what should Wine Spectator being doing?
First, tap into the magazines writing talent to communicate a message that is personable, honest, and truly connects with people. Reassure customers that they will be credited for any downtime for premium services. And finally, address the issue of security and storage of credit card information that re-assures people that their credit card information and personal data is safe.
From a reputation management perspective, it'll be interesting to see how this one plays itself out.
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