Should we close our community during a service outage?

Absolutely not. Closing the community will only drive the angry conversations to social media, where you have no control. Keep it open and use it as your central hub for communication and updates.

How do I handle angry and abusive posts in the community during a crisis?

Have a clear moderation policy. Respond to legitimate anger with empathy and point people to the official update thread. Remove posts that violate community guidelines (personal attacks, abuse), but be transparent about why you are doing so. Don't just delete criticism.

Who should be posting the official updates in the community?

The updates should come from a single, official company account or a designated leader (e.g., Head of Support). The Community Manager's role is to amplify those updates, moderate the conversation, and provide empathetic responses, not to be the source of technical information.

A Community-Led Crisis Communications Playbook

When things go wrong, your customer community can be your greatest asset or biggest liability. A step-by-step guide to crisis comms in your community.

Published: 1 June 2026
Topics: crisis communications, community management, customer experience, incident response, b2b saas

By Francisco Opazo · Reviewed by the Led by Community editorial team

A community-led crisis communications playbook is a strategic plan that uses your customer community as the central command centre for managing incidents like outages, data breaches or product sunsets. It focuses on speed, transparency and centralising communication to maintain customer trust when things go wrong, turning a potential liability into a strategic asset.

A product outage hits at 2 PM. Within minutes, social media is ablaze with confused and angry customers. But the real fire is raging in your customer community. Is it a dumpster fire of speculation and rage, or a controlled, informative command centre? The difference is preparation.

What is a Community-Led Crisis Communications Plan?

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