What you need to know about building an incident response communication plan.
Does your marketing team have a plan that helps guide and train them on what to do when one of your product or services are down? By having a plan, your team can approach these scenarios with confidence and efficiency. If you don’t have a plan, the time you will invest in developing one will pay off within months. From little outages for digital services, unexpected delays, or product shortages, your team is likely spending more time on these types of communications than you realize. Here are a few questions and answers you may have if you are considering developing an incident response communication plan.
What is an incident response communication plan (IRCP)?
An incident response communication plan (IRCP) is a document that is your guide to communicating when your organization has a gap in service or products. It outlines what team is responsible for managing response communications, escalation, scenarios, and provides resources.
What is an IRCP important?
Having an IRCP saves time, money and creates consistency in communications for your customers and clients. By having your most likely and most common scenarios planned out and your team trained, it takes the “what do we do” fear out of the situation and allows your team to respond quickly and efficiently. An IRCP serves as a training guide for your staff and ensures consistency of tone, level of detail, and frequency of your communications.
What are the main components of an IRCP?
Your IRCP will include the following:
Instructions on how to use the document
Steps and specific guidelines to communicating in response to an incident
A scenarios list
A detailed plan for your most common and likely scenarios, including scripts and instructions
Stakeholders and responsibilities matrix
Additionally, you will receive resources including:
Messaging mapping worksheet
Audience questions worksheet
Press release template
Media fact sheet template
Message approval form
Media tips
Train-the-trainer session
How often should an IRCP be updated?
An IRCP should be updated a minimum of annually as part of your regular testing plan. As your organization develops new products, services, or platforms, additional updates may be required as new risks come with expansion.
How often should an IRCP be tested?
Your team should test your IRCP at least annually. New employees that are part of the response team should be trained on the plan as part of their onboarding.
How do you test an IRCP?
Tabletop exercises are very effective for testing your IRCP, as it allows your team to work through a scenario step by step so that when they may encounter the scenario it feels more familiar. Additionally, your team should do a review of the full scenario list to ensure that as many scenarios are accounted for as possible.
