An External Incident Report is a customer-facing document that communicates the details of a service disruption or operational issue to stakeholders such as customers, partners, or vendors. Its purpose is not only to explain what happened but also to reassure users of your organization’s commitment to accountability and continuous improvement.

Unlike internal incident reports, which delve into technical specifics for in-house teams, external reports are simplified, concise, and user-focused.

They are designed to:

• Reassure Stakeholders: Show accountability by transparently addressing the issue and your response.
• Explain Clearly: Provide an easy-to-understand summary of the incident, resolution, and preventive steps to avoid confusion or alarm.
• Maintain Trust: Demonstrate that reliability and service quality are top priorities.

External reports prioritize the impact on users, actions taken, and steps to prevent recurrence while omitting overly technical details that could overwhelm or alienate the audience. These reports strike a balance between transparency and approachability, helping to maintain trust and confidence in your organization.

If you’re feeling uncertain or confused about postmortem documentation, you're not alone. This blog is here to provide a clear, well-structured approach to help you create an effective postmortem template specifically designed for external customers and end users.

Providing a clear and concise Incident Overview is the foundation of an effective external incident report. This section ensures stakeholders understand the key facts at a glance, including when the incident occurred, its duration, and the services affected.

Details to Include:

• Date of Incident: [Insert the date when the incident occurred.]
• Duration: [Specify the total time the service was impacted.]
• Affected Service(s): [List the name(s) of the affected service(s).]
• Incident Status: Resolved
• Severity: [Choose between High or Critical based on the incident's impact.]

What Happened

Summary Example:

"On [date], between [start time] and [end time], our [specific service/system] experienced an unexpected disruption, which affected [brief description of impacted users or systems]. The issue resulted in [specific impacts, such as downtime, limited functionality, or delays]."

This overview should give customers a clear understanding of what happened without overwhelming them with technical jargon. It sets the tone for the rest of the report, showing that you value transparency and are actively working to ensure reliable service.

Impact

The Impact section provides a clear and concise explanation of how the incident affected customers and, optionally, the business. This transparency helps build trust by showing stakeholders that you understand the disruption’s consequences and take them seriously.

Customer Impact:

• Scope: [Provide the extent of the affected user.]

e.g., "Approximately 20% of our users experienced delays in accessing the service during the incident period."

• Metrics: [Include specific, measurable impacts]

e.g., "Orders were delayed by an average of 15 minutes," or "Certain features, such as [feature], were unavailable for 3 hours."

Business Impact: (Optional)

If relevant, mention how the incident impacted internal operations, partnerships, or broader business functions.

Example:

"During this time, [specific operations] were temporarily impacted, causing delays in processing [specific tasks or services]."

Apology:

Add an apology note, which can look like:

"We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this incident may have caused. Your trust is important to us, and we appreciate your patience and understanding as our team worked diligently to resolve the issue."

Thus, in this way, customers feel that their concerns are recognized and emphasize your commitment to minimizing such disruptions in the future.

Actions Taken

The Actions Taken section highlights the steps your team took to address the incident, restore services, and prevent similar issues in the future. This section reassures stakeholders of your proactive approach and commitment to reliability.

Immediate Response:

Our team identified the issue within [X minutes/hours] of detection and promptly initiated the following measures to minimize the impact:

• [Action 1]: [E.g., Restarting services or rerouting traffic to alternative servers to stabilize operations.]
• [Action 2]: [E.g., Engaging with external vendors or partners to investigate and resolve the issue.]
• [Action 3]: [E.g., Communicating updates to internal teams and stakeholders to streamline the resolution process.]

Resolution:

The issue was resolved at [time], and all services were fully restored. Our monitoring confirmed system stability shortly after resolution, and normal operations resumed.

Follow-up Actions:

To prevent similar incidents in the future, we have taken the following steps:

• Improved Monitoring: Implemented enhanced monitoring tools and processes to detect and respond to potential issues earlier.
• System Configuration Updates: Adjusted system settings to address vulnerabilities identified during the incident.
• Failover Mechanisms: Strengthened our failover and redundancy mechanisms to ensure seamless operations in case of similar disruptions.
• Incident Response Protocols: Conducted a review of our incident response strategy and updated runbooks to improve efficiency.

These actions reflect our dedication to delivering reliable services and minimizing the likelihood of future disruptions.

Preventive Measures

To strengthen our systems and ensure resilience against similar disruptions, we are implementing the following preventive measures:

Process Improvements

• Updated internal protocols to enable faster detection and resolution of incidents.
• Enhanced incident communication workflows to keep stakeholders informed in real time during disruptions.
• Regularly reviewing and optimizing runbooks to streamline the incident response process.

Infrastructure Updates

• Deployed additional redundancy and failover capabilities to minimize service interruptions during unexpected events.
• Upgraded monitoring tools to provide advanced analytics and proactive alerts for potential issues.
• Conducted a comprehensive audit of system configurations to address potential vulnerabilities.

Team Training

• Conducting refresher training sessions for our engineering teams to ensure familiarity with updated protocols and tools.
• Introducing simulation-based drills to improve the team’s readiness and response efficiency during incidents.
• Encouraging cross-functional knowledge sharing to enhance collaborative problem-solving during complex disruptions.

These measures reflect our ongoing commitment to delivering reliable and high-quality services while minimizing future risks for our customers and stakeholders.

Timeline

Providing a detailed timeline helps stakeholders understand the sequence of events and the swift actions taken to address the issue.

Here's how the incident unfolded with example:

• Start of Incident: 12 December 2024, 10:15 AM
• The incident began when [service/system] started experiencing disruptions, affecting user access to [specific functionality].
• Issue Detected: 12 December 2024, 10:20 AM
• Our monitoring tools flagged unusual activity, and our engineering team confirmed the issue.
• Mitigation Actions Started: 12 December 2024, 10:25 AM
• Immediate steps were taken to mitigate the impact, including [e.g. rerouting traffic, restarting services, or engaging external vendors].
• Resolution Achieved: 12 December 2024, 11:10 AM
• Full functionality was restored after identifying and addressing the root cause of the disruption. Our monitoring tools confirmed system stability at this time.

This timeline demonstrates our team’s prompt response and effective coordination to minimize downtime and restore services as quickly as possible.

Acknowledgment and Next Steps

We deeply value your trust in our services and understand the critical importance of reliability. Please know that we are fully committed to providing you with the highest level of service.

To address this incident, we have taken immediate corrective actions and implemented preventive measures to minimize the likelihood of similar disruptions in the future. Additionally, we are investing in long-term enhancements to our infrastructure and response capabilities to ensure the resilience and reliability you expect from us.

If you have any further questions, concerns, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team at [support email] or [contact number].

We sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to resolve this issue. Thank you for continuing to trust us as your partner.

Sincerely,

[Your Company Name]

[Contact Information]