Client incident report template (after an outage)

What it's for

• Agencies that host or look after client websites and apps.
• Explaining an outage to a client in plain English, without blame.
• Showing how an outage counts against an uptime promise.

What's inside

Summary and impact

What happened in two or three sentences, who was affected, and when it started, was noticed and was fixed.

Timeline

Each step from the first alert to the fix, with times and a time zone.

Cause and fix

What went wrong and what put it right, in plain English.

Next steps

Actions to stop it happening again, each with an owner and a date.

Preview

Worked example: the timeline of a fictional checkout outage (times in AEST)

Checkout was down for 53 minutes, from the first alert at 09:12 to the fix at 10:05. A 99.9% monthly uptime promise allows 43 minutes 12 seconds in a 30-day month, so this outage alone is 9 minutes 48 seconds over, and the report says so.

How to use it

1. Tell the client as soon as you know about the outage. Write this report once it is fixed and you understand the cause, while the details are fresh.
2. Start with a summary of two or three sentences that a non-technical reader can follow.
3. Give every time with its time zone, and work out how long it lasted from when the problem started to when it was fixed.
4. Explain the cause plainly and without blame. Say what you know and what you are still checking.
5. List each next step with an owner and a date, and tell the client when they are done.
6. If you have an uptime promise, show how the downtime counts against it.

Questions