Crisis communication: definition, phases and crisis plan

A product recall, a data breach or a serious allegation against the CEO: in the first few hours, journalists, customers and employees decide whose version of events to believe. Teams that only then ask who speaks and who signs off lose that time. Most of good crisis communication is preparation.

Crisis or issue?

An issue is a gap between what an organisation does and what its stakeholders expect. It usually builds over weeks or months and can still be shaped. That is the job of issues management.

A crisis is an acute event that demands an immediate response. In his entry for the Institute for Public Relations, W. Timothy Coombs describes three threats a crisis can create: to public safety, to finances and to reputation. Many crises start as issues that nobody dealt with in time.

The three phases

Coombs divides crisis management into three phases.

Before: prevention and preparation

Prevention means reducing known risks. Preparation means writing a crisis plan, naming a crisis team and testing both in exercises. Coombs recommends updating the plan at least once a year.

During: the crisis response

The first response matters most. When people are at risk, instructions come first: what they should do to protect themselves. Public health agencies have formal frameworks for this, such as the CDC's Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication programme.

After: learning

Deliver the information you promised, review your work and feed the lessons back into the plan.

What goes into a crisis communication plan

A crisis plan is a reference tool, not a script. It saves time because tasks and information are prepared in advance.

• Crisis team: typically communications, legal, security, operations, finance and HR, with others such as IT added depending on the crisis.
• Roles: who leads, who speaks publicly, who monitors coverage, who briefs employees.
• Approval paths: who signs off a statement and how fast, including at night and at weekends.
• Holding statements: prepared first responses for likely scenarios, ready to be completed with the facts.
• Contact lists: crisis team, authorities, key newsrooms and suppliers, with deputies.
• Channels: website, newsroom, social media, intranet, hotline, customer email.
• Dark site: a prepared crisis page that stays offline until it is needed.

The first hour: four principles

1. Speed: Coombs advises an initial response within the first hour. A holding statement is enough.
2. Facts: say only what is confirmed, be open about what you do not know yet, and say when the next update will come.
3. Empathy: concern for the people affected comes before any defence.
4. One voice: several people can speak, but all of them follow the same line.

Coombs' Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) helps choose the response after that. It looks at how much responsibility stakeholders attribute to the organisation: little in victim crises such as natural disasters, more in accidents, a lot in preventable crises. Crisis history and prior reputation add to the threat. The more responsibility people attribute, the more the response needs apology and compensation.

Monitoring during a crisis

During a crisis, media monitoring answers four questions:

• What is happening now? Real-time alerts flag new coverage of the brand, product or people involved.
• Is it getting better or worse? Volume and sentiment over time show how coverage changes. On their own, they do not show whether your response is working. For that you need other evidence: whether affected people received and understood the instructions, what stakeholders tell you, and whether the underlying problem has been resolved.
• Who is driving it? Which outlets and journalists are covering the story, and who has picked up a false claim.
• What are AI assistants saying? ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews summarise published coverage. Their answers can keep repeating a crisis long after the news cycle has moved on, so check them during and after.

Example: a fictional crisis timeline

The company and all numbers below are invented. A maker of spreads, here called "Talheim Foods", finds foreign objects in one batch.

Evaluating after the crisis

Useful questions for the review: How long did the first response take? Did the approval paths work? How did volume and sentiment develop, and which outlets corrected false claims? What do AI assistants say about the brand today? A structured media content analysis provides the coverage figures. Whether affected people received the instructions and whether the problem is resolved comes from other sources, such as hotline enquiries, feedback from customers and retailers, or surveys. The findings go back into the plan and the next exercise.

How aclipp helps

aclipp combines media monitoring and AI visibility in one workspace. Global online monitoring across more than 150 million sources, with alerts, shows new coverage early, tracks volume and sentiment through a crisis and shows which outlets are reporting. AI visibility tracking shows what ChatGPT and other AI assistants say about your brand during and after a crisis.