Telling customers about an outage before they call

During an outage the first cost does not come from the outage but from the phone calls. Whoever notifies first keeps their service standing.

Send before they call

As soon as you know something is wrong, even if you do not know the cause yet. "We are on it" on time is worth more than a full explanation an hour later.

Put three things in it

What is not working, what you are doing, and when you will report again. That last one prevents most of the calls.

Keep that promise

Even if there is nothing new. A second message saying it is still ongoing keeps people calmer than silence.

Close it off

A message when it is resolved. Without it people keep calling to ask whether it works yet.

Prepare it

Make sure the list is current and that more than one person can send, including from home. An outage procedure that depends on one laptop fails exactly when it must not.