Imagine you're having a regular day at work, opening up your browser, double checking something for a client in that web app your team built for

Communicating to Users During Incidents

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2022-01-14 10:30:10

Imagine you're having a regular day at work, opening up your browser, double checking something for a client in that web app your team built for them, when suddenly, you see this screen:

For you, as someone on the operational side of the app, it's frustrating because you're trying to fix the problem as fast as possible, with as little distraction as possible.

On the user side of things, their work day is interrupted, and without good communication, they're not sure if someone is currently working on the issue, or when it'll be fixed.

On the left, there's "ignore your users", or under-communicate. The vast majority of organisations are on this side of the scale.

On the right, there's "send each of your users an SMS every few minutes to let them know how it's going", or over-communicate.

While it's rare for a company to intentionally ignore their users during an incident, even waiting to confirm exactly what's happening before acknowledging an issue can be extremely frustrating for users.

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