BlackBerry maker botches crisis response

When a BlackBerry outage left millions without e-mail, the product’s maker failed to communicate to the press or customers

Your company’s crisis communication plan is probably better than that of Research in Motion, the company that makes BlackBerry—the device attached to so many communicators’ ears.

For three hours on Monday, Feb. 11, e-mail service to roughly eight million BlackBerry owners in North American failed. The outage began around 3:30 p.m. EST. Service returned about three hours later, and the messages that hovered in cellular ether began filtering in shortly thereafter.

During the outage, Research in Motion, or RIM, failed to communicate with the majority of customers and media outlets. And afterwards, it failed to provide adequate follow-up information—aside from a couple jargon laden statements to the press—and failed to engage its audience in any two-way dialogue.