Crisis at Uber

Everything seemed to be working fine. In fact, for a while, they actually were. Then, tragedy struck and now Uber Technologies, Inc., finds itself facing a major crisis. For a good while now, Uber has been working on producing a series of driverless cars as a way to further enhance its successes and serve its growing customer base. Unfortunately, while testing one of its new driverless cars, a few days ago in Arizona, a pedestrian was struck and killed. This is the first time such a tragedy has occurred. Out of this, several questions emerge: What impact will this have on the move toward driverless cars? and, more directly, How will this effect Uber? 

From the standpoint of the overall industry, one auto safety advocate predicted the accident will put a severe dent in consumer confidence in the concept of driverless cars. Time, as always, will tell. But more immediately, what will this do to the Uber "brand?" Further, how will executives at Uber respond? From a communication standpoint, it is going to be interesting to see the steps that they take to address the questions and concerns that are emerging in the aftermath of what happened. How and even what they do could very likely have a major impact on the company's profit-margin. Bottom line: this incident is a perfect case study in the area of crisis communication.

There are several key areas on which folks at Uber need to focus: identifying the real and potential problems; formulating the specific messages they wish to put forth; and determining the audiences that the company needs to address and/or with which they need to be concerned. In addition, fairly or not, time is not Uber's friend. Their responses, verbal and otherwise, should already be underway. A person has died and people want answers and, perhaps more importantly, public accountability. Without that, it will not be surprising to see confidence in Uber drop sharply. It is up to Uber to ensure that possible decline is only temporary.