To review a crisis communications plan, paste the plan itself, the current organization chart, the list of systems the plan depends on, the size and location of the communications team, any customer contract notice terms, and the board's escalation rules. Then instruct Pingpong to read it section by section as a director and a hostile reporter would. Ask whether every audience has a named speaker and a backup who still works at the company, whether the channels survive an outage of your own systems, whether the promised update schedule matches the people available, and who can approve a statement at 3 a.m. Counsel owns legal and regulatory notification, and the plan should say so in writing.
This page is for chief executives, board chairs, and heads of communications who own a written crisis plan and want it checked between incidents. Executive starting points live under Pingpong for executives.
What a director asks of each section
Audiences and speakers
Is there a named speaker for customers, employees, investors, the board, regulators, partners, and reporters? Does each have a backup in a different time zone or role? A common gap is a speaker who has left the company.
Channels
Which channels does the plan rely on, and do any run on the systems most likely to fail? A status page hosted on the same cloud account as the product goes down with it.
Update cadence
What does the plan promise, and can the team deliver it at hour 20? An hourly update promise from a three-person team in one city will break overnight.
Escalation and approval
When is the board or audit committee told, by whom, and on what trigger? Who can approve a first statement, and who stands in when they cannot be reached?
Consistency
Do customer, employee, and investor messages draw on one fact sheet, or does each team write from its own notes?
Counsel's lane
Does the plan name who decides on legal and regulatory notice in each jurisdiction where you operate?
A worked example
This example is illustrative and does not describe a customer. A 600-person logistics software company has a 22-page crisis communications plan, last revised two years ago. The board chair wants it confirmed as current before the next meeting.
The head of communications pastes the plan, the leadership list, the infrastructure summary, the team roster, notice terms from the top 50 customer contracts, and the board's governance guidelines.
A useful pass finds that the customer spokesperson is a former chief revenue officer who left last year, and three of five audiences have no backup. The plan relies on company email and a status page hosted in the same cloud account as the product. It promises customers hourly updates, while the communications team is three people in one office. The board is to be told "as appropriate," and the audit committee chair does not appear.
Each audience version is owned by a different team, with no shared fact sheet. A first statement needs approval from both the chief executive and general counsel, with no delegate named. The regulatory section covers one country, and the company now operates in three.
The team revises the plan. A table lists the speaker and backup for each audience, reviewed quarterly. The status page moves to separate infrastructure, and a backup channel is set up outside company systems. Updates are promised every two hours for the first 12 hours, then twice daily, with an agency on retainer for overnight coverage. The audit committee chair is told within four hours of any top-severity incident. One fact sheet, owned by the head of communications, feeds every audience version. Either the chief executive or general counsel, together with the head of communications, can approve a first statement, and each has a named delegate. Counsel maintains a notification table for all three countries.
Approved templates for first statements sit in an appendix. When one is adapted during a real incident, stress-test the holding statement before it goes out. To find out whether the revised plan works under pressure, run a crisis tabletop with the people named in it.
A request you can copy
Below are our crisis communications plan, current leadership list, the systems the plan depends on, our communications team's size and locations, customer notice terms, and board escalation rules. Review the plan section by section as a director and as a hostile reporter. Flag speakers who have left or have no backup, channels that depend on systems likely to fail, update promises the team cannot staff, vague board triggers, approval steps with no delegate, and gaps in consistency across audiences. Mark legal and regulatory notification questions for counsel.
How Pingpong runs the review
The web review app sends your request through several models in order. Each later model receives the original request and every earlier answer, with instructions to assess the work so far. For the steps inside the app, see running your first review.
What a model can't review
A model does not know which people would actually answer the phone on a weekend or how your systems fail in practice. Counsel owns legal and regulatory notification requirements, and the plan's owners decide what changes.
When the revised plan goes to the board, see war-game a decision before the board meeting. More guides live under work decisions before you commit.