I Tried 7 Crisis Management Software to See if They’re Worth It (Results & Recommendations)

How to Choose the Best Crisis Management Software for Your Company in 2024

No company is immune to a crisis. In today‘s hyper-connected digital world, a brand‘s reputation can be shattered in minutes by a negative news story, social media backlash, or publicized customer complaint. According to a recent study by PwC, 69% of business leaders have experienced at least one corporate crisis in the last 5 years, with the average number of crises doubling from 2019 to 2022. As the frequency and velocity of crises continue to increase, it‘s more important than ever for companies to have a robust crisis management plan—and the right software to support it.

What is Crisis Management Software?

Crisis management software enables companies to monitor and respond to negative sentiment and media coverage across online channels. These tools provide real-time alerts for brand mentions and allow teams to collaborate on a strategic response, whether it‘s replying to an angry customer on Twitter, issuing a press release, or updating the company website.

While many companies already use social media management or PR software, these tools often fall short in a real crisis. Here‘s what to look for in a comprehensive crisis management platform:

1. Speed and Alerts
   When a crisis erupts, every minute counts. Sophisticated social listening, news monitoring and sentiment analysis can surface potential issues early, before they go viral, so you can get ahead of the narrative. Custom alerts that notify you immediately of negative posts or a sudden uptick in mentions are also critical for rapid response. Look for a platform with a user-friendly mobile app so you can take action from anywhere.

2. Ease of Use
   A crisis is not the time to struggle with clunky, complicated software. An intuitive interface with all your monitoring and messaging tools accessible from a single dashboard is essential. The ability to easily search past posts, access pre-approved content, and see conversation histories can help you craft the right response without delays or missteps.

3. Approval Workflows
   In the midst of a crisis, speed should not come at the cost of accuracy. Look for a platform with built-in approval workflows so designated leaders can review and sign off on crisis responses before they go live. The ability to assign posts, documents or action items to specific team members is also helpful for staying organized and accountable.

4. Customer Service Integration
   Social media has become the go-to channel for customer complaints. An angry tweet can quickly snowball into a full-fledged crisis if not handled promptly and professionally. Choose a crisis management platform that integrates with your CRM and customer service software, so you can easily identify and engage with upset customers, track interactions across channels, and turn a negative experience into a positive one.

5. Press Release Distribution
   When a crisis situation calls for a formal media statement, you need the ability to rapidly publish and distribute an official message. While no crisis management platform includes a full-fledged media database, some allow you to build your own media lists and send email pitches right from the dashboard. Others have partnerships with newswire services for official press releases.

Putting Crisis Management Software to the Test

To illustrate these capabilities in action, let‘s walk through a sample crisis scenario and see how a company could use crisis management software to take control of the situation.

The Crisis: Product Recall
Imagine you are the Director of Communications for a toy company. You arrive to work one morning to an avalanche of social media posts and news headlines about a potential choking hazard in one of your top-selling toys. Complaints are coming in from customers and regulators are launching an investigation. You need to act fast to issue a voluntary recall and stem the tide of negative coverage.

Using Your Crisis Management Platform: A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Monitoring and Alerts
   First, you use the platform‘s social listening and sentiment analysis tools to gauge the full scope of the backlash. An AI-powered command center displays trending keywords, influential posts, and overall sentiment scores from social media channels and online news sites. Customized alerts notify you immediately of any posts mentioning "choking," "recall," or your brand and product names.

2. Responding to Customers
   Next, you triage and reply to individual customers on social media. Advanced searches quickly surface the posts that pose the highest risk based on keywords and sentiment. Using the platform‘s CRM integration, you can view the full history of past interactions to personalize your response. You tag priority posts for follow up from your customer service team and set the status to "Responded."

3. Notifying Internal Stakeholders
   From the platform‘s home screen, you compose an internal email to your product and executive teams with a synopsis of the situation. Before sending, you route the message through the proper approval workflow chain. You attach the latest social media and web analytics reports, auto-generated with a single click.

4. Distributing a Press Release
   Simultaneously, you draft an official media statement announcing a voluntary recall with instructions for customers to receive a full refund. You build a segmented media list directly in the platform and email your release as a targeted pitch. For wider coverage, you also distribute it through the platform‘s newswire service integration.

5. Analyzing the Results
   With your initial response complete, it‘s time to hunker down and monitor the results. An AI-powered crisis management platform can ingest data across channels—from social media and news sites to your company website and customer service center—to provide a holistic view of whether your response is working to change the narrative and restore trust. Interactive data visualizations display the total volume of mentions, sentiment scores, and top conversation themes over time.

Rating the Top Crisis Management Platforms

Now that we‘ve seen crisis management software in action, let‘s compare 7 of the top platforms and assess how they stack up in our five key capability areas. While every company‘s needs are different, this analysis can help you determine which tools merit a closer look for your organization.

1. HubSpot
   HubSpot‘s Marketing Hub offers a centralized platform for social media management, with tools for publishing, monitoring and reporting. It shines in the customer service arena, with a shared inbox that syncs conversations from email, live chat, and Facebook messenger, plus a built-in ticketing system. The CRM integration is also best-in-class, allowing granular segmentation and contextualized engagement based on a customer‘s past interactions and behavior. While HubSpot lacks press release distribution, it‘s an excellent all-in-one solution, especially for SMBs.

2. Cision
   Cision is the long-standing market leader in media monitoring and PR tools. The platform boasts an unrivaled global news database, with print, online, broadcast, and social coverage from over 100 countries. Intuitive search capabilities, customizable alerts, newsletter creation, and interactive data visualizations make it easy to track coverage and share results. The built-in "story kit" also suggest trending topics and journalist targets for proactive pitching. For an additional fee, companies can send press releases via the PRWeb distribution service. While Cision offers social listening, it lacks publishing and engagement tools, so it‘s best paired with a dedicated social media management platform.

3. Sprout Social
   Sprout Social is one of the most user-friendly and comprehensive social suites on the market, with support for all major networks including TikTok and WhatsApp. The smart inbox leverages AI to surface and prioritize posts that need immediate attention, while customizable workflows and permissions enable efficient team collaboration. The chatbot builder and integrations with Zendesk, HubSpot, and other CRMs empower seamless customer care. Advanced social listening tracks conversations across social, news, blogs, podcasts and more, with instant alerts for viral spikes or sentiment changes. Sprout‘s intuitive interface, in-depth analytics and focus on engagement make it a highly capable crisis management tool.

4. Meltwater
   Meltwater stands out for its cutting-edge use of AI and machine learning to derive actionable intelligence from big data. The platform analyzes billions of real-time editorial, blog, and social media conversations across 190 countries and 70 languages to help you spot emerging trends and risks. Influencer identification, automated sentiment analysis, and customizable dashboards enable sophisticated reputation monitoring. On the engagement front, Meltwater offers publishing, social listening, and a full-fledged influencer marketing suite. However, some may find the sheer volume of data and analytics overwhelming compared to more streamlined solutions.

5. Hootsuite
   One of the pioneers in the social media management space, Hootsuite‘s strength lies in its flexibility and integrations. Customizable streams help you focus on the most important conversations, while the ability to track and engage across paid, earned and owned channels provides a unified view of your social presence. A built-in content library, bulk scheduling tool, and customizable approval flows simplify publishing at scale. Hootsuite also has a mobile inbox for on-the-go engagement and integrations with Adobe, Salesforce, Marketo, Slack and other enterprise tools. While some of the advanced features like chatbots and social advertising are limited to higher-priced plans, Hootsuite remains a robust and reliable choice for social-centric crisis management.

6. Sprinklr
   Sprinklr bills itself as a unified customer experience management platform, reflected in its wide range of capabilities beyond just social media. The platform allows you to aggregate and analyze data from 30+ channels, including messaging apps, review sites, customer care systems and even IoT devices. AI-powered insights, customizable workflows and an extensive partner ecosystem support omnichannel customer engagement. For big companies with vast and complex data sets, Sprinklr‘s enterprise-grade compliance, security and governance make it an attractive option. However, some may find the platform overly complex for basic crisis monitoring and response.

7. Business Wire
   For organizations that still rely heavily on traditional media relations, Business Wire is one of the most trusted press release distribution platforms. As a subsidiary of Warren Buffet‘s Berkshire Hathaway, it has a reputation for credibility and reach, with a network of over 89,000 media outlets in 162 countries. The platform offers features like News Optimizer reports with web analytics, engagement and influencer data, hosted multimedia assets, and translation services. A partnership with Cision also provides news monitoring and targeting capabilities. However, Business Wire is best viewed as a complement to, not a replacement for, social media and customer engagement tools.

Preparing for the Inevitable: Why Every Company Needs a Crisis Plan

No matter which crisis management software you choose, the most important thing is to have a plan and process in place before a crisis hits. Here are a few final tips as you evaluate your crisis communication readiness:

1. Assess your risk factors. Every industry and company will face different potential crises. Conduct an analysis to uncover your most likely threats—whether it‘s a data breach, executive scandal, product failure or customer complaint —and prioritize your monitoring efforts accordingly.

2. Identify your crisis team. Determine in advance who will be on your core crisis response team, and what role they will play. In addition to PR/communications and social media leads, be sure to include representatives from legal, HR, customer service and other relevant departments. Assign backups for each role in case of absence.

3. Develop key messages and holding statements. When a crisis hits, you don‘t want to start crafting your messaging from scratch. Prepare a library of pre-approved messaging, broken down by crisis type, that you can quickly customize and deploy. Include a set of initial "holding statements" to buy time while you gather more facts.

4. Train your spokespeople. Any employees who may be called on to speak publicly in a crisis, whether it‘s an interview with the media or a video message to consumers, should undergo crisis communication training. Focus on delivering clear, concise messages with empathy.

5. Practice makes perfect. Regularly conduct crisis simulation exercises with your team to pressure-test your plan and tools. Track your response times and effectiveness and incorporate learnings to optimize your approach. Technology is no substitute for human judgment under pressure.

While the thought of a crisis keeps many executives up at night, with the right planning and preparation, you can face any challenge with confidence. By leveraging the speed, coordination and insights of an integrated crisis management platform, you can protect your brand and emerge from a crisis stronger than ever.