I Tested Crisis Communication Strategies for 30 Days

Our startup's app crashed on launch day. 2,000 people were mid-signup when everything died. Our Slack channel filled with screenshots of error messages. Twitter wasn't kind.

My cofounder wanted to stay quiet until we fixed it. I disagreed. The silence was killing us.

What I sent that afternoon—and the communication strategy over the following weeks—taught me more about crisis communication than any PR course ever could.

The First 60 Minutes Are Everything

When something goes wrong publicly, most companies freeze. They huddle in conference rooms drafting the perfect statement. Meanwhile, customers fill the silence with their own narratives.

Here's what I learned: imperfect communication in the first hour beats perfect communication three hours later.

Our first message was simple:

We're aware that signups are failing and are actively working on a fix. We'll update you every 30 minutes until this is resolved. We're incredibly sorry for the frustration.

Not polished. Not complete. But it accomplished three things:

1. Acknowledged the problem existed
2. Showed we were working on it
3. Promised ongoing updates (and kept that promise)

Within 30 minutes, the Twitter tone shifted from "this company is dead" to "let's see how they handle this."

The "Acknowledge, Own, Act" Framework

After that crash, I studied dozens of corporate crisis responses. The ones that worked followed a predictable pattern:

Acknowledge: State what happened, specifically. No corporate speak, no minimizing.

Own: Take responsibility. Even if it wasn't entirely your fault, your customers experienced a problem. That's on you.

Act: Explain what you're doing to fix it AND what you're doing to prevent it from happening again.

Most companies get the first two right but skip the third. People don't just want to know you're sorry—they want to know it won't happen again.

What Not to Say

Some phrases actively make crises worse:

"We apologize for any inconvenience." "Any" suggests you're not sure there was inconvenience. There was. Acknowledge it.

"An isolated incident." Until you've fully investigated, you don't know this. If it turns out to be systemic, you've just destroyed credibility.

"Our team is looking into it." Too passive. Who specifically? What are they doing? When will they have answers?

"We take [issue] very seriously." Everyone says this. It means nothing. Show seriousness through action, not declarations.

The Update Cadence That Works

During active crises, I follow this schedule:

First hour: Update every 15-30 minutes, even if the update is "still working on it."

Hours 2-6: Update every hour.

Day 2+: Daily updates until fully resolved.

After resolution: Publish a post-mortem within a week.

The key insight: no update feels like silence. Silence feels like you don't care or don't know what's happening. Even "no new information yet" is better than nothing.

Internal vs. External Communication

Your team often hears about crises from customers before you can brief them. This creates a secondary crisis: confused employees giving inconsistent messages.

My rule: internal communication happens within 15 minutes of external communication, and it should include:

1. What happened
2. What we're telling customers
3. What employees should say if asked
4. Who's handling what

I also learned to create a simple FAQ for common questions. Customer service teams need ammunition, not mystery.

The Post-Mortem That Builds Trust

Most companies treat post-mortems as internal documents. This is a missed opportunity.

A public post-mortem after a crisis demonstrates:

• Transparency about what went wrong
• Technical competence in diagnosing issues
• Concrete steps to prevent recurrence
• Accountability from leadership

The structure I use:

1. What happened (timeline, scope of impact)
2. Why it happened (root cause, not blame)
3. What we did to fix it (immediate response)
4. What we're doing to prevent it (long-term changes)
5. Acknowledgment and apology (personalized, from leadership)

Some of our biggest customer advocates became advocates after our post-mortems. They respected that we showed our work.

When to Stay Quiet

Not every crisis requires public response. Before communicating:

Ask: Is this public knowledge? If only a few people know, wide communication might amplify a small problem.

Ask: Are people waiting for a response? If customers are asking, you need to answer. If nobody has noticed, maybe fix quietly.

Ask: Will our response make this better or worse? Sometimes additional communication keeps a story alive longer than silence would.

The Speed vs. Accuracy Tradeoff

Fast communication risks being wrong. Slow communication risks seeming uncaring.

My approach: be fast about what you know, and honest about what you don't.

"We're experiencing login failures. Our team is investigating the cause. We'll share more once we understand the scope." This is fast AND honest about uncertainty.

Don't wait until you have complete information. Share what you know, acknowledge the gaps, and commit to updates.

Practice Before You Need It

The worst time to figure out crisis communication is during a crisis.

Every quarter, I run a tabletop exercise: "What would we say if X happened?" We draft statements, identify gaps in our process, and assign roles.

When our actual crisis hit, we weren't scrambling to figure out who does what. We had a playbook.

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