Effective incident communication involves aligning internal teams for a swift and coordinated response while keeping external stakeholders informed to build trust and manage expectations.
Internally, centralized communication platforms help teams share updates, assign roles, and collaborate without confusion or redundancy. Externally, dedicated channels, such as status pages or customer support ticketing systems, enable teams to respond and set expectations at scale.
Common incident communication channels:
- Status pages: A centralized place for incident communication.
- Team chat: For internal teams to communicate in real-time.
- Alerting platforms: So internal teams are notified of potential issues.
- Social media: To inform your followers of known issues.
- Email notifications: To reach a targeted group, often powered by status page notifications.
- Text notifications: To reach a targeted group, often powered by status page notifications.
- Documentation: For consulting existing technical docs and processes, taking notes, and drafting a post-incident review.
- Issue tracking: For assigning incident-related tasks.
- Help center embed: To surface active incidents on your help center, minimizing incoming tickets.
- UI embed: Surface any active incidents directly in your web UI to reach users directly where they’re experiencing issues.