First, I’d like to give you a little background on this story. You can read all of the details here.
AirBNB is a website that allows you to rent out your home or apartment to vacationers or business travelers. One user of the service had their house completely destroyed by a renter (Seriously, read the story. You won’t believe the extent to which the renter went to cause destruction). AirBNB did everything they could to rectify the situation and even helped the police arrest the renter. What they didn’t do is win the PR fight with the owner of the house
Tech insider Robert Scoble breaks down how they should have handled the situation in this Google+ post. I’d like to point out one very important item that every CEO should know.
The CEO should NOT use exclusively use press to argue out his case. Why not? The press has goals that might not align with cleaning up the crisis. Instead, the CEO should USE VIDEO! Why video, instead of text? We can tell whether you are lying or not. When I see text I can’t tell, but video is far more convincing. Look at how Domino’s CEO responded to a crisis: http://youtu.be/s-gvs2Y2368 AirBnb should have done this. They still should do this.
I covered a situation similar to this in a previous post in which the CEO of Groupon used video to apologize to his users in Taiwan when they provided a deal that the business couldn’t fulfill.
The bottom line is, if you want to instill trust, use video and look your customers in the eye. This goes for delivering good news as well as bad.