How smart video technology has made crisis management less disastrous

Streamlining communications during an emergency can make all the difference in how response is successful or not.

Let’s explore how smart video technology has changed the game and when to use live and video on demand before, during and after a corporate or public crisis. After all, there will always be disasters, emergencies, incidents and unfortunate episodes, but there are new ways of handling a crisis—better than what’s been done before.

We have come a long way in how we handle crisis communications. From the earliest days of smoke and torch signals, to telegraphs, to emergency two-way radios and land line telephones, and now we find ourselves in an age of exponential technological advances in crisis communication— leveraging “smart” video, defined by live, real time and asynchronous (async) video that includes video management, flawlessly reliable delivery and analytics.

How does smart video make a difference?

Emotional response to a crisis can bring about confusion, that leads to inefficiencies and most likely, chaos. Smart video via live streaming and async video can be accessed immediately from any device for continuous engagement with a hyper distributed workforce or wide variety of stakeholders. Companies are now enabled to communicate timely with credible information securely, reliably, and at scale.

For example:

• During a wildfire, a CEO can update the company via live stream that offices are being closed for the emergency. All employees in the path have been checked on, and subsequent updates via async video are released regarding the employee’s safety and company updates.
• In a hurricane, company leaders can provide updated async messages that are shared about the safety of all offices, where power is out, and what the company is doing to continue operations and cover for any employees that are affected.
• In a major winter blizzard, a CEO can use an async video to connect with employees personally to encourage them to stay home and stay safe.

How to protect your business during a crisis.

Like natural disasters, business crisis management also demands a robust communication system to protect the welfare of your people and health of your business. Like, for example,  security breaches, management changes, supply chain challenges, product recalls, market shifts or other operational outages or issues.

With reliance on only written forms of communication to keep information flowing in a crisis, there is the risk of losing your audience before they even understand the primary message. Live streaming and async crisis management video can ensure people interpret the message correctly to understand the situation, have the right information, and know exactly what they need to do. Forbes reports that viewers retain 95% of the information from watching a video and only 10% is retained after reading written content once over.

Using the right communication channels internally and externally will be key in keeping your business running during a crisis. With a distributed work force, video will be essential to deliver your crisis communication plan in real time no matter where stakeholders are located, no matter what time zone they are in and no matter what device they are using.

To communicate with internal employees, live streaming at scale creates an authentic and personal connection to disseminate information, answer questions, and provide real time information effectively, and async video will play an important role in your strategy to guide and manage ongoing updates in short and simple videos.

Companies that have a crisis management strategy that incorporates smart video into their business crisis management plan will not only survive the crisis but will thrive well after it.

Real world. Real events. Real time. Real smart video.

TJ Kennedy is CEO, Qumu Corporation