Here’s a random top ten list of activities that I undertake more quickly, easily and effectively using my smartphone that was imaginable even five years ago.
- Buying half price tickets to Tampa Bay Rays games (MLB Ballpark).
- Swapping information with my neighbors in St Pete Beach (Nextdoor)
- Accessing my drugstore money-saving coupons – no paper! (CVS)
- Making dinner reservations at our fave place, Castile (Open Table)
- Watching that episode of American Crime I missed (Netflix)
- Measuring how many miles I walk on the beach (Apple Health)
- Finding a plumber to fix the wonky shower in the master-bath (Yelp)
- Getting instant updates from Manchester United games (BBC Sport)
- Ordering and paying for a taxi to get to Tampa airport (Uber)
- Booking movie tickets for the Sundial movie-house in beautiful downtown St Petersburg (Fandango)
And I have not even mentioned the more mainstream apps like banking, maps and social media.
I am sure you have your own list.
Is accessing and activating your organization’s crisis plan on your list?
It is hard to imagine what the alternative might be to a crisis app given the speed at which issues explode and rapidly become damaging crises.
If the worst was to happen today to your organization, where is your crisis plan? How would you access it? How would you activate the team and the plan?
I know we are biased, as RockDove Solutions created the market-leading In Case of Crisis mobile crisis app, now used by more than 750 organizations.
So let me make it case for a mobile crisis app with another Top Ten list.
Here are some of the things that the In Case of Crisis smartphone app can do more quickly, easily and effectively in a crisis than any other means of deploying your plan.
- Alert you instantly when an incident occurs.
- Access the organization’s response plan wherever you are and whatever the day or time.
- Confidence that you have an up-to-date list of all the organization’s key contacts.
- Ability to message all members of the crisis team simultaneously.
- Set up a crisis team call within minutes of the initial alert.
- Share alerts with all the organization’s employees.
- Have team members check-in on availability/safety during the incident.
- Access previously prepared response protocols, processes and messages.
- Share information from news sources or the internet.
- Monitor the incident and share updates.
As much as I love my ability to get cheap baseball tickets and order a taxi in the rain, the bigger impact of digital and social media over the past few years has been to change the nature of organizational risk and to speed up considerably how threatening issues unfold and become full blown crises.
If you cannot access and activate your crisis plan via a mobile app, you are stuck in a world where you waited in line at the movie house, hoped for repeats of the TV shows you missed and got drenched on street corners looking for a cab.
