Crisis Can Strike Anytime — Even the Holidays. Are You Ready? | Entrepreneur

We all look forward to the next holiday: time off, activities with family, sleeping in, etc. However, just because the calendar recognizes it is a holiday does not mean that your website or customers really pay attention to that fact (especially for those in ecommerce).

So, what happens if your website crashes or a customer has a major product issue they need help with?

Holidays mean different working hours for companies and different schedules for employees that take off. If a problem pops up during that time, it can be a nightmare to overcome it by trying to get ahold of the correct people to solve the issue — and if you have a physical storefront, it might be hard to get access to it if the person who has the keys is off on an island enjoying an extended vacation somewhere.

Before you and your team enjoy some much-deserved time off, it is important to put a crisis management plan in place so your business is ready to tackle any issue that crops up. This is not to say that you should make employees work over holidays or ruin your own work-life balance. However, your team should be prepared in case of an emergency.

Related: 10 Commandments of Successfully Managing a Business Crisis

Step 1: Get contact info and schedules

As each major holiday approaches, you should put together an ICE (in case of emergency) list of contacts that everyone on your team has access to. Ask your employees to provide the best way to contact them and what their schedules look like. It is important to have alternate contacts, too.

For example, if your website developer is going camping off-grid and will not have a cell signal over the holiday break and two days beyond that, you should have an alternate contact in place that the team can reach out to if your website crashes.

Step 2: Rotate an on-call schedule

Upper management needs to be available in a crisis. Each holiday, establish a team member in management who is the point of contact if an issue arises. Rotating this ensures that everyone can enjoy holidays throughout the year. Let managers know they need to provide their contact info and the best way to reach them so that everyone knows who and how to reach out.

Step 3: Put a plan in place

Once everyone has provided their schedules and a manager has been established as on call, it is important to provide your team with a plan. This will look different for each company and industry, but a brief outline of a plan might look like this:

1. A designated person needs to check in on the company. This might look like checking the customer service line or reviewing the CRM to ensure customer orders are being accepted.
2. If something goes wrong, the on-call person will need to decide how to handle it. Maybe they can fix it quickly if it is something small. You can provide a decision tree for your team that demonstrates what is considered a small issue and what is considered a larger issue that requires someone else higher up the food chain to handle. If it is a larger problem, the designated on-call person can use the emergency contact list to reach out for help.
3. Next, the problem should be logged somewhere in a central place. This helps your team avoid future similar issues and ensure proper procedures are followed.
4. Once the proper people are contacted and the issue is documented, hopefully it is resolved. However, if not, be sure to have something in place you can send to customers to let them know the problem cannot be handled until after the holiday.

It’s a good idea to brainstorm some things that might go wrong so that you can provide your team with examples on what to do. For example, what should your team do if they notice that customer orders are being rejected by the CRM? What happens if your social media account gets locked due to an issue with a post? Ask your team to provide suggestions of what might go wrong to be as prepared as possible.

Related: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming a Business Crisis

Step 4: Remember everyone is human

It is okay to also remember that everyone is human and needs a break. That means it is acceptable to just let customers know your team is out of the office and cannot be reached. Just be transparent with your clients and they will be understanding. Wherever your customers can find you, put a note that no one is available, but after the holidays their concerns will be addressed immediately. This should look like web banners, out-of-office email notifications, social media posts, etc.

Remember to give your team some grace too. If you choose to have someone on-call, let them know that if a huge problem happens and they do their best but are still not able to resolve it, that’s okay! So long as they follow all the procedures you establish ahead of time, you know they did their best.

No matter how much planning, brainstorming or just plain worrying you do, you can’t predict every single emergency. The best you can do is put a plan in place, train your team and recognize at the end of the day that you all deserve a holiday, too. Your team should feel supported whether they are on-call or fully enjoying time off for a holiday, and a crisis management plan can help them feel secure.