What a Communications Liaison should not share during incidents.

Communications that matter during an incident

Incidents can start like a small ripple and suddenly feel like a wave you didn’t see coming. In the middle of the storm, clear, purposeful communication is often what keeps teams focused and stakeholders calm. The role that handles this steady stream of information is the Communications Liaison. Think of them as the bridge between the people who need updates and the people who are solving the problem. Their job isn’t to fix the issue; it’s to ensure the right information flows to the right people at the right time.

Who is the Communications Liaison, exactly?

Let me break it down. The Communications Liaison is all about messaging. They craft updates for stakeholders—customers, executives, and internal teams—so everyone knows what’s happening without wading through a tangle of technical details. They monitor the incident’s impact on customers, help gauge severity, and translate real-world effects into clear, concise updates. They also keep the Incident Commander in the loop with relevant feedback from the outside world, so the people handling the response can adjust the strategy if needed.

In short, this role is about clarity, not code. It’s about the audience you’re speaking to and the channel you’re using, rather than the nuts and bolts of the issue itself.

What isn’t in the Communications Liaison’s wheelhouse?

Here’s the thing: sending technical details to responders isn’t the Liaison’s job. Those details are the domain of the engineers, on-call responders, or the incident’s technical leads. Their focus is diagnosing the problem, applying fixes, and validating that the system is healing. The Liaison, meanwhile, filtered through the noise, decides what’s appropriate to share with a given audience—so everyone stays informed without being overwhelmed by jargon.

If the Liaison starts relaying raw tech specifics to non-technical stakeholders, the briefing can get muddy fast. People may misinterpret, overreact, or lose trust in the process. The right move is to keep technical chatter with the people who need it and translate outcomes, timelines, and impacts for others.

A practical scenario: how this works in the real world

Imagine a regional service outage. The status page is live, and customers are starting to feel the pinch. The Incident Commander has a handle on the technical path to resolution, while the Ops team works the fix. The Communications Liaison steps in to craft the updates.

First, they draft a neutral, factual update for customers: what happened in plain language, what actions are being taken, and what to expect next. Then they prepare a separate, internal briefing for executives and team leads about the customer impact, trends, and any shifts in priority. They also capture feedback from customers and frontline teams—things like “this user story is failing in production” or “we’re seeing higher latency in a specific region”—and relay that to the Incident Commander so the plan can adapt.

If a customer asks for technical specifics, the Liaison reframes the request. They might respond with, “We’re actively restoring service in the affected region. Technical details are available to the on-call engineers in the internal channel.” That keeps the public messaging clean while the right people get the deep dive they need.

Why tracking customer impact matters—and how the Liaison handles it

Customer impact isn’t just a checkbox. It’s a signal that helps the whole team calibrate urgency and messaging. The Liaison watches for trends: which user segments are affected, how severe the disruption feels to customers, and whether the issue is expanding or shrinking.

To manage this well, they use clear metrics in updates: outage duration, the affected services, and any known workarounds. They translate those datapoints into plain language, so someone who isn’t a tech expert can grasp the stakes. This fosters trust. When customers see consistent, candid updates, they’re more likely to stay informed and patient, even if the outage lasts longer than anyone hoped.

A quick note about tone and cadence

You don’t want every update to feel forensic, but you also don’t want to sugarcoat reality. The trick is to be transparent about what you know, what you don’t know yet, and what the team is doing to find answers. Short, frequent updates work well for fast-moving incidents, with longer, more detailed notes for when the situation stabilizes. And yes, you’ll use different channels for different audiences—status pages for customers, internal dashboards for teams, and perhaps a concise executive briefing for leadership.

Bringing it all together: channels, content, and cadence

Channel strategy matters. A well-tuned mix might include:

• Status pages: transparent, customer-facing progress updates.

• Incident updates in the chat tool or a dedicated channel: brief, actionable, and timely for responders.

• Email or messaging to key stakeholders: more formal statements for executives or partner teams.

• Internal dashboards: quick-glance indicators of impact, progress, and looming milestones.

Content should be tailored. For customers, you might say, “We’re investigating and will provide an estimated time to resolution as soon as we have it.” For executives, you’d focus on impact, risk, and suggested next steps. For responders, you provide the feedback loop—the summarized customer pain points and the operational decisions driven by that feedback.

Practical tips to shine in the Communications Liaison role

• Know your audience. Think about what each group needs to hear and how they’ll use that information.

• Keep it simple. Use plain language, short sentences, and concrete numbers when possible.

• Filter before you share. Don’t hand out every technical detail. Share what’s necessary to understand the impact and the plan.

• Be precise about timelines. If you don’t know an answer yet, say so and commit to updating as soon as you do.

• Maintain a steady rhythm. Regular updates beat sporadic bursts of information.

Real-world tools and how they fit

Many teams rely on a familiar toolkit. PagerDuty helps orchestrate the incident workflow, while Statuspage can serve as the public-facing update board. Inside teams, Slack or Microsoft Teams channels enable rapid, bite-sized status messages. A simple, well-structured incident brief can save a lot of back-and-forth. The aim is to keep communication clean, timely, and perceptibly under control.

Common missteps to avoid

• Overloading audiences with technical minutiae. If someone can’t translate it into an action or a decision, it’s probably not needed in that update.

• Missing the customer perspective. If you only talk about systems and metrics, you risk sounding cold. Mention user impact and real-world effects.

• Delayed updates. Silence creates anxiety. Short, consistent updates are more reassuring than occasional, lengthy posts.

A bite-sized takeaway you can use today

• The Communications Liaison is the steward of information flow, not the artisan of fixes.

• They translate complex happenings into clear, audience-appropriate updates.

• Technical details stay with the engineers; the Liaison communicates impact, plans, and feedback.

• Channel strategy and tone matter as much as accuracy.

• Regular, concise updates build trust and reduce confusion.

A final thought: the human side of incident responses

Incidents aren’t only about systems; they touch people—customers waiting for a service, teammates juggling priorities, leaders anxious about risk. When you remember that, the role of the Communications Liaison becomes even clearer. It’s about empathy as much as clarity: acknowledging the disruption, offering a path forward, and keeping the lines open so everyone can function together, even under pressure.

So, if you’re navigating a tough incident, picture the bridge you’re building. It’s a simple, human connection—between what’s happening technically and what people need to know to stay informed, prepared, and calm. And that bridge, well maintained, can make a tough incident feel a little less daunting for everyone involved.