By Stephen Basile, Chief Revenue Officer of Catania Oils
Key takeaways:
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Proactive and authentic communication is essential: Companies should prepare crisis messaging in advance, ensure leadership and frontline staff deliver aligned messages, and provide customers with both broad updates and personal support.
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Transparency and empathy build trust: Be honest about challenges like price increases, maintain consistent communication through familiar channels, and show genuine concern for customers’ own business struggles.
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Balance speed with accuracy: Share timely updates, even if partial, to reassure customers, while following up with accurate details as they emerge — maintaining credibility and reducing confusion.
The 2025 tariffs ushered in a new era of US trade policy and created a dramatic economic shift for companies to navigate. The First Quarter 2025 CFO Survey published by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta reports that 30% of the 400 responding firms rank trade and tariff policies as their primary business concern, triple the percentage of the previous quarter. While industries like manufacturing are predicted to bear the brunt of economic impact, the tariffs represent looming uncertainty for companies across sectors.
Economies are always shifting and changing, and this year’s tariffs are only the most recent development in a history of economic shifts that have impacted how companies operate. From pandemics like COVID-19 to unpredictable supply chain issues created by war, famine, or policy change, economic volatility is a fact of business. So how can you ensure your company remains stable, or even thriving, despite shifting economic conditions and global instability?
Strategic communication with your customers and stakeholders will preserve trust and partnership while your company navigates difficult business decisions and changing economic landscapes. Here are four tactics to enhance your communications strategy during times of unpredictability.
Be proactive in preparing for crisis
You cannot predict what crisis will hit, but there are steps you can take to ensure you’re a step ahead when the time comes. An internal gameplan for systematizing certain processes can prevent panic and promote agility during a crisis.
Additionally, certain aspects of your messaging will remain the same regardless of the crisis, such as your company’s core values that inform your macro approach to handling situations. Draft messaging that is prepared in advance and incorporates this evergreen information can save valuable time when a crisis hits. Details can be added when information becomes available.
Develop an authentic strategy
Messaging may have to come from multiple sources to alleviate customers’ concerns and ensure they feel heard. Your CEO may not interact with customers on a daily basis, but customers will still expect messages from the top outlining broad changes that will impact them.
At the same time, sales teams, account leads, and managers who interact with customers on a daily basis will provide a necessary personal element to the delivery of unfortunate news, and act as an avenue for customers to voice their questions and concerns. Make sure your customer-facing employees are equipped with the necessary information to provide thorough answers and that they are continually updated with any internal policy shifts that occur.
Be consistent and honest
Glossing over or attempting to hide the truth about price increases or other unsavory news will diminish trust in your company and isolate you from your customers. Make sure your company is up front in delivering bad news (even if, in the case of tariffs, it’s not your fault).
Customers should not have to contact you for updates — news should be delivered proactively and in a way that is already familiar to your customers. Do you typically communicate via email? Phone? Social media? Don’t change up your communication strategy during a crisis — it will catch your customers off guard during an already-stressful period.
Be sympathetic to your customers’ concerns
Your company might be enduring a crisis, but your customers are navigating their own business interests. Using the example of tariffs, your customers might already be operating with tight margins and need reassurance that your company will not take advantage of their vulnerability to promote your own financial interests.
When confusion is abundant, be mindful that your business decisions still put the customer first and communicate those decisions appropriately. This might look like implementing temporary systems that provide pricing transparency, communicating more frequently, or even making individual adjustments to your internal processes on an as-needed basis. These decisions might necessitate more effort in the short term, but will help preserve critical relationships in the long term.
Find a balance between speed and accuracy
In an emerging economic crisis, accurate information may be difficult to come by. In the case of tariffs, shifting deadlines and rumors at the outset made it difficult to alert customers of upcoming changes.
It may not always be possible to update customers the same day, but you don’t have to solve the problem in a single email. Cascading messages provide a balance between speed and accuracy. Consider sending a preliminary message acknowledging that there will be upcoming changes and you’ll be back in touch with further details as soon as possible. You can send a follow-up when this information becomes available. This demonstrates a commitment to alleviating your customers’ concerns while ensuring you don’t have to walk back an initial statement released before you had accurate information.
While you can’t prevent economic volatility, strategic communications can give your company the necessary edge to navigate the unexpected with agility.
Stephen Basile is the Chief Revenue Officer of Catania Oils, a 125-year-old family-owned business that is the Northeast’s leading processor and packager of plant-based edible oils. www.cataniaoils.com
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