How often should we update the crisis communication plan?

Review quarterly and after every major incident. The most common reason plans fail is that they reference people who have left the company or channels that are no longer active. A 15-minute quarterly review catches these gaps before a real crisis exposes them.

Who should own the crisis communication roadmap?

The Head of Product or VP of Operations typically owns the plan. During an active crisis, a designated crisis communications lead (often a senior PM or comms director) executes it. The owner maintains the plan; the lead runs it during incidents.

Should we communicate before we know the root cause?

Yes. The first message acknowledges the issue and sets expectations for updates. Customers do not need root cause in the first hour. They need to know you are aware and working on it. Waiting for root cause before communicating is the most common mistake in crisis response.

How do we handle social media during a crisis?

Route all social responses through a single person. Do not let multiple team members reply independently. Acknowledge the issue publicly, direct users to the status page, and avoid speculating. Social media amplifies conflicting messages faster than any other channel. ---

Crisis Communication Roadmap Template

Quick Answer (TL;DR)

This free PowerPoint template gives your team a structured crisis communication plan. Response protocols, pre-written messaging templates, channel routing, and stakeholder tiering. All on slides you can share in the first minutes of an incident. Download the .pptx, customize the stakeholder tiers and channel matrix for your organization, and have a ready-to-execute communication playbook before the next crisis hits.

What This Template Includes

Cover slide. Organization name, crisis communication plan version, and the designated crisis lead.
Instructions slide. How to activate the plan, assign communication roles, and escalate across tiers. Remove before distributing externally.
Stakeholder tier matrix slide. A four-tier grid (Tier 1: executive and board, Tier 2: affected customers, Tier 3: all customers and partners, Tier 4: public and media) with channel assignments, response windows, and message approval chains for each tier.
Crisis timeline slide. A phased timeline (0-1 hour, 1-4 hours, 4-24 hours, 24-72 hours, post-crisis) showing what each team communicates, to whom, and through which channel at each phase.
Filled example slide. A SaaS company handling a major outage: CEO emails Tier 1 within 30 minutes, status page updates every 15 minutes, customer success contacts top accounts directly, and a post-incident summary goes to all users within 48 hours.

Why Crisis Communication Needs a Roadmap

When something breaks, the communication failure usually causes more damage than the incident itself. Customers tolerate outages; they do not tolerate silence. Yet most teams default to improvisation during a crisis. Scrambling to decide who writes the status page update, whether the CEO should email customers, and what to tell the sales team while deals are in flight.

A pre-built communication roadmap removes decision-making from the moment when decision-making quality is lowest. Everyone knows their role, the messaging is pre-approved for common scenarios, and the channel routing is already decided. The stakeholder management guide covers the theory; this template is the operational artifact.

Template Structure

Stakeholder Tiers

Four tiers determine who hears what, when, and how:

Tier 1 (Executive/Board). Notified within 30 minutes via direct message or phone call. Receives candid status including revenue impact and estimated resolution time.
Tier 2 (Affected customers). Notified within 1 hour via email and in-app notification. Receives impact description, workaround if available, and next update time.
Tier 3 (All customers/partners). Notified within 4 hours via status page and email. Receives a clear summary without speculation.
Tier 4 (Public/media). Only if the crisis reaches public visibility. Uses pre-approved holding statements through official channels.

Channel Matrix

Each tier maps to specific channels. Tier 1 gets Slack DMs and phone calls. Tier 2 gets personalized emails from their CSM plus in-app banners. Tier 3 gets status page updates and broadcast emails. This prevents the common failure of sending a CEO-level briefing to the entire customer base, or leaving the board uninformed while the status page gets updated.

Response Phases

Five time-based phases structure the communication cadence. The first hour focuses on acknowledgment. Confirming the issue exists and that the team is working on it. Hours 1-4 shift to regular status updates. Hours 4-24 cover resolution or extended incident management. Post-crisis covers the retrospective and follow-up communication.

How to Use This Template

1. Map your stakeholder tiers

List every audience that needs communication during a crisis. Group them into the four tiers based on urgency and relationship. Your tier assignments will differ from the defaults. A B2B company with 50 enterprise accounts might put every customer in Tier 2, while a consumer app with millions of users keeps Tier 2 for the top 1%.

2. Assign channel owners

Each channel needs a named owner who is responsible for updates during a crisis. The status page owner is not the same as the CEO email drafter. Assign backups for every role so the plan works when someone is on vacation.

3. Pre-write message templates

Draft templates for the three most likely crisis types: outage, data incident, and security vulnerability. Templates should have blanks for specifics (duration, affected features, timeline) but the tone, structure, and approval chain should be locked. Waiting to draft messaging during the crisis costs critical minutes.

4. Run a tabletop drill

Before a real crisis, walk through the plan with a simulated scenario. Time how long it takes to send the first Tier 1 notification. Identify bottlenecks. Usually the approval chain is slower than expected. Adjust the plan based on what the drill reveals. The product experimentation guide discusses structured testing approaches that apply to crisis preparedness.

When to Use This Template

A crisis communication roadmap is essential when:

Your product serves enterprise customers who have SLA expectations and escalation paths that activate during outages
You have multiple stakeholder audiences (board, customers, partners, press) that require different messaging and timing
Regulatory requirements mandate specific notification timelines for incidents involving data or availability
Your team has grown beyond 20 people and ad-hoc communication during incidents no longer works
A previous crisis exposed communication gaps that cost customer trust or created internal confusion

If your incidents are small and your customer base is technical enough to watch a status page, a simpler incident response roadmap may suffice. This template is for when the communication challenge is as large as the technical one.

Key Takeaways

Pre-built stakeholder tiers and channel assignments remove decision-making from the moment when judgment is most impaired.
The first communication goal is acknowledgment, not explanation. "We know, we are on it" beats silence every time.
Pre-written message templates for your three most likely crisis types save critical minutes during the real event.
Run a tabletop drill at least once before relying on the plan. Most plans fail on the approval chain bottleneck.
Review the plan quarterly and after every incident to keep names, channels, and escalation paths current.
Compatible with Google Slides, Keynote, and LibreOffice Impress. Upload the .pptx to Google Drive to edit collaboratively in your browser.

Crisis Communication Roadmap Template for PowerPoint