Kat Gaines - Mastering incident communication

Automation

Learn best practices for mastering incident communication from a customer-centric approach, effective messaging, and the importance of a human touch.

Key takeaways

Define terms and roles to avoid confusion and promote effective communication.
Establish clear incident communication model and guidelines for customer-facing teams.
Determine when to communicate an incident, considering impacted customers, severity, and communication fatigue.
Create incident response templates to simplify reporting and reduce communication time.
Highlight the importance of customer-facing teams in incident communication, citing their unique perspective and close relationships with customers.
Emphasize the need for a human touch in incident communication, despite the temptation to automate.
Focus on providing essential information only, avoiding unnecessary details and jargon.
Set clear expectations for communication frequency and content.
Highlight the value of having a structured communication plan in place before an incident occurs.
Discuss the importance of having a customer liaison role and a separate incident commander role.
Emphasize the need for coordination and collaboration between teams during an incident.
Suggest conducting regular check-ins and post-incident reviews to improve understanding and response.
Recommend using monitoring tools to identify issues and trigger incident communication.
Encourage transparency and situational awareness during incidents.
Highlight the importance of industry-standard terminology and abbreviations.

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