Crisis communication plan template (with a text message section)

A crisis communication plan template is a fill-in document that decides, before anything goes wrong, who speaks, who approves, who gets told first and through which channel. The copy below covers roles, contact lists, an approval chain, channel order, holding statements, and a texting section with pre-written alerts. Fill it in this week and keep a copy somewhere that still works when your main systems don't.

Most small and mid-size businesses don't have a written plan. In practice the first hour gets spent finding the owner's cell number, arguing about wording and discovering the customer list lives in a tool nobody can log into. The template fixes the first two problems. The texting section fixes the third, as long as you set it up before you need it. That part takes days, not minutes.

How to use this template

Copy each section into a shared doc. Replace everything in [brackets]. Print one copy and save one offline, because a crisis that takes down your email or website will also take down a plan stored there.

Review it twice a year and after every real incident. A plan with last year's phone numbers is worse than no plan, because people trust it.

Section 1: Scope and severity levels

Define what counts as a crisis so nobody has to argue about it at 7 AM.

Fill in: Our Level 3 triggers are: [list]. Anyone can declare a Level 2 or above by calling: [name, number].

Section 2: Roles

Keep it to five roles or fewer. In a 15-person business, one person may hold two.

• Crisis lead: [name / backup]. Declares the level, runs the call, owns the timeline.
• Approver: [name / backup]. Signs off every external message. One person, not a committee.
• Spokesperson: [name / backup]. The only person who talks to press or posts publicly.
• Channel operator: [name / backup]. Sends the texts, emails and posts. Needs logins to every tool listed in Section 5.
• Scribe: [name / backup]. Logs every decision and message with a timestamp. You will want this record later.

Each backup needs the same access as the primary. An approver who is on a flight without a backup turns a 30-minute target into a four-hour one.

Section 3: Contact lists

Keep three lists, each with a named owner and a "last verified" date.

1. Internal: staff, with mobile numbers. Note who has agreed to receive work texts.
2. External stakeholders: landlord, insurer, IT provider, key suppliers, lawyer, local authorities if relevant.
3. Customers: the list you would text or email in a closure or outage. Note where consent for each channel is recorded.

Fill in: Customer list lives in: [system]. Exported backup saved at: [place], last exported: [date].

Export the customer list monthly. If your CRM is the thing that's down, a CSV from two weeks ago is enough to send a closure notice.

Section 4: Approval chain

Speed comes from deciding in advance what doesn't need approval.

• Pre-approved (send without sign-off): the holding statements in Section 6, used word for word with only the brackets filled in.
• Approver sign-off required: any message that names a cause, admits fault, mentions injuries or data, or promises compensation.
• Legal review required: anything involving a breach, an injury or a regulator.

Fill in: If the approver doesn't respond within [15] minutes, approval passes to: [name].

Section 5: Channel order

The order you notify people matters as much as the wording. Staff should never learn about a closure from a customer text.

1. Phone call to the crisis team (decision makers first)
2. Text to all staff
3. Text to affected customers who have opted in to texts
4. Email to the full customer list with more detail
5. Website banner and status page
6. Social posts
7. Press statement, if needed

Text sits high on the list because people read texts quickly. Email is where the longer explanation goes. Most crisis texts should end with a link to a status page you can update without re-texting everyone.

Section 6: Holding statements

A holding statement buys time. It says you know, you're on it, and when the next update comes. It does not guess at causes.

• General: "We're aware of [issue] affecting [who]. Our team is working on it now. We'll share an update by [time] at [link]."
• Closure: "[Business] is closed today, [date], due to [reason]. Customers with appointments will be contacted to reschedule. Updates at [link]."
• Data or security incident: "We're investigating a security issue that may affect some accounts. We'll share what we know by [time]. We will never ask for your password by phone, text or email."
• All clear: "[Issue] is resolved as of [time]. Thanks for your patience. Details at [link]."

Section 7: The text message section

This is the part most templates skip and the part that fails most often, because texting at scale has setup steps you can't rush during an incident.

Pre-written alert texts

Keep each one in plain characters (no emoji) and under 160 characters once filled in. That keeps every text to one segment. One emoji drops the limit to 70 characters, and a 140-character text with an emoji becomes 3 segments instead of 1, which triples the cost and slows the send.

• Customer closure: "[Business]: We're closed today, [date], due to [reason]. We'll text you a new appointment time by [time]. Reply STOP to opt out"
• Service outage: "[Business]: [Service] is down and our team is on it. Next update by [time]: [link]"
• Security notice: "[Business]: We're looking into a security issue. Updates by [time] at [link]. We will never text you asking for a password."
• Staff alert: "[Business] STAFF: Do not come to [site] today. Team call at [time]. Reply OK when you've read this."
• All clear: "[Business]: [Issue] is fixed as of [time]. Thank you for your patience."

Load these as reusable templates in your texting tool now so the channel operator only fills in brackets.

Get consent before you need it

A crisis is not a reason to text people who never agreed to texts. Text the customers and staff who opted in, and reach everyone else by email, phone or your website. Practical steps:

• Add a text opt-in checkbox to booking, checkout and onboarding forms, with wording that covers service and account alerts.
• Get written opt-in from staff for work texts.
• Keep the consent record (who, when, what wording, which page) in your own CRM or form tool. When you send through Ready, we record your attestation for each bulk send and each API send that sets consent_attested (who sent it, to how many, when), but that's an audit trail of the send, not a per-contact consent record. Your system has to keep that.

Register now, because approval takes days

Carriers filter unregistered business texting, so your number needs A2P 10DLC registration. In Ready that happens in-app: brand plus campaign, $25 charged at submit for the first month, then $25/mo for registration + $2 per number monthly. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days. 10DLC cost: every fee explained breaks down each fee.

Register a use case that matches what you'll actually send. Service alerts registered as marketing (or the reverse) is a common cause of filtering. See matching use-case to what you actually send.

Throughput: how long the alert takes to go out

Carriers cap sending speed, and there's no official rate card, so treat these as rough approximations. A fresh standard campaign with no vetting typically gets about 1 to 4 segments per second. T-Mobile also caps daily volume by brand trust score, starting around 2,000 messages a day at the lowest score.

Worked example, with stated assumptions: 3,000 opted-in customers, a one-segment closure text, at an assumed 2 segments per second.

• 3,000 segments ÷ 2 per second = 1,500 seconds, about 25 minutes to finish the send
• Cost on Ready Standard: 3,000 × $0.0075 = $23, plus 3,000 × the $0.0045 carrier fee. That figure excludes the compliance surcharge ($0.003 per segment each for scrubbing and landline validation, both off by default).
• Replies are billed like sent texts, so if roughly 10% reply, add 300 segments at the same rate.

If your list is large enough that the daily cap or a 25-minute send is a real problem, brand vetting ($79 Standard / $179 Enhanced, one-time) can raise your trust score. It moves the daily cap only when the score crosses a tier, and it doesn't change the per-second rate. Is 10DLC brand vetting worth $79? walks through when it pays off. For most small businesses, standard registration is enough.

Quiet hours will hold overnight texts

Ready enforces quiet hours based on the recipient's area. A campaign or automation sent at 11 PM waits for the recipient's window (up to 24 hours), and you're charged only when it sends. A 1:1, inbox or API text, including POST /v1/messages/bulk, is held only if the window opens within 6 hours; otherwise it is refused with 409 QUIET_HOURS_BLOCK and you must resend it. That protects you from TCPA exposure, but it also means overnight texts are not an instant overnight alert channel. For a Level 3 incident at night, phone your crisis team. The Ready Dialer lets you call from the dial pad in the dashboard (or inside GoHighLevel) at $0.025/min, and nothing goes out without a person dialing.

Sending the alert from Ready

In the app: pick the template, select the opted-in segment, review, send. Opt-outs, numbers on your Ban list and known landlines are refused up front and not charged. Replies land in the Inbox (and in GoHighLevel for connected accounts), where staff can answer them one by one.

If you send from your own system, use the bulk endpoint with an Idempotency-Key so a retry during a chaotic moment never texts everyone twice:

POST https://api.tryready.com/v1/messages/bulk
X-API-Key: <your key>
Idempotency-Key: 6f1c2a9e-4b7d-4c1e-9a3f-2d8e5b7c0a11

{
  "to": ["+12125550199", "+12125550198"],
  "body": "Acme Clinic: We're closed today due to a power outage. We'll text a new appointment time by 3 PM. Reply STOP to opt out",
  "consent_attested": true
}

consent_attested: true is your promise that these recipients agreed to texts. Full details are in the bulk messages docs.

Section 8: After-action review

Within a week of any Level 2 or 3 incident, meet for 30 minutes and answer:

• How long did it take from discovery to the first internal message? To the first customer message?
• Did any approval step block a message?
• Which contacts were missing or wrong?
• How long did the text send take, and were any messages filtered? (If an approved campaign still gets filtered, content-level blocking is the usual cause.)
• What do we change in this template?

The practical takeaway

Most of a crisis plan can be written in an afternoon: names, numbers, an approver, a channel order and five holding statements. The texting section is the one with a lead time. Opt-ins have to be collected ahead of time, registration takes most approvals 2 to 7 days, and you want to know your send speed before you depend on it. If you want texting ready ahead of time, you can set up a Ready account, register and load your templates. Then put the date of your next review in the calendar.

FAQ

What should a crisis communication plan template include? At minimum: severity levels, named roles with backups, contact lists with owners, an approval chain, a channel order and pre-approved holding statements. If you text customers or staff, add pre-written alerts and your registration and consent details.

Can I text customers during a crisis if they never opted in? Use texts only for people who agreed to receive them. Reach everyone else by email, phone or your website. A crisis doesn't change the consent rules, and the exposure is roughly $500 to $1,500 per text under the TCPA.

How fast can I text my whole customer list? That depends on your campaign's throughput. A fresh standard campaign often gets about 1 to 4 segments per second, so 3,000 one-segment texts at an assumed 2 per second take about 25 minutes. Keep alerts to one segment to keep sends fast.

Do I need 10DLC registration just for emergency texts? Yes. Carriers filter unregistered business texting regardless of the reason for the text. Register before you need it, because most approvals take 2 to 7 days.

Will Ready send an urgent text at 2 AM? Usually not. Quiet hours are enforced based on the recipient's area: a campaign waits for the window, and an API or 1:1 text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise it is refused and must be resent. A reply to a contact who texted you in the last 24 hours can go out at any hour. For overnight emergencies, call your team instead.