Emergency Playbook: What to Do When Your CRM Provider Has an Outage

Hook: Your CRM is down — leads don't wait

When a CRM outage hits, the clock is not your friend. Incoming enquiries keep arriving via email, chat, forms and phone; prospects expect a reply in minutes, not hours. In January 2026 a series of large-scale outages tied to infrastructure and CDN providers again proved that even top-tier CRMs can be unavailable. This runbook gives sales and support teams a pragmatic, time-tested sequence to surface enquiries, continue deals, and preserve data integrity until normal service resumes.

Executive summary — what to do now (TL;DR)

Follow this order immediately when you detect a CRM outage:

1. Declare the incident and notify core stakeholders (Incident Commander, Ops, Sales Lead, Support Lead).
2. Switch to manual fallback capture (shared mailbox + CSV capture + sticky notes in a backup ticketing system).
3. Keep SLAs by introducing short-term response SLAs and triage rules.
4. Preserve canonical data with immutable exports, UTC timestamps and content hashes.
5. Synchronize and reconcile once the CRM returns, using dedupe and conflict resolution rules.

Read on for a minute-by-minute runbook, roles and responsibilities, templates, data integrity controls and post-incident checklists grounded in 2026 best practices.

Why this matters in 2026: trends shaping CRM outages and responses

Several developments make having a robust outage runbook essential in 2026:

• Higher dependency on API-first CRMs and cloud services. Platform outages at CDN, DNS and cloud providers (notably incidents reported in late 2025 and January 2026) have shown cascading failures that affect CRM access.
• Real-time customer expectations. Buyers expect sub-15-minute responses for high-value enquiries; missed early contact heavily degrades conversion.
• Offline-first capture and durable queues. Modern toolchains increasingly support local-first capture, but many enterprises still need manual fallbacks.
• Regulatory pressure and data residency. GDPR, state privacy laws and SOC 2/ISO 27001 obligations mean your fallback must still protect personal data.
• AI-assisted triage. Teams are using AI to prioritize enquiries, but AI models must be fed reliable, full-fidelity records captured during outages to avoid biasing lead-scoring.

Runbook activation: Detection and declaration

Detection triggers (when to activate)

• CRM status page shows outage or partial outage for >5 minutes.
• API heartbeats fail — 5xx error rate >5% for >2 minutes.
• Sales or support report inability to fetch/create records from UI or API.
• Automated synthetic checks fail (from multiple geographic regions).

Immediate declaration steps (0–5 minutes)

1. Incident Commander (IC): named person declares "CRM Outage" and sets severity (P1/P2) in your Incident Management tool (PagerDuty, Opsgenie, etc.).
2. Notify core stakeholders: Sales Director, Support Director, IT/Ops, Data Privacy Officer, Communications, and an Engineering liaison.
3. Open an incident channel: create a pinned Slack/MS Teams channel titled #incident-crm-outage-YYYYMMDD and post status updates every 15 minutes.
4. Record initial facts: time, affected regions, error types, vendor status links.

"An outage is a people problem as much as a technical problem — clear roles and repeatable steps reduce cognitive load and SLA breaches." — SRE best-practice

Immediate containment: how sales & support keep the pipeline moving (0–15 minutes)

Prioritize continuity. The goal in the first 15 minutes is to capture every inbound enquiry, preserve metadata, and ensure customers receive confirmation.

Fallback capture stack (fast-to-implement)

1. Shared mailbox (primary): designate a monitored shared inbox (e.g., support@company.com, sales@company.com) that your team can access. If mail is still flowing, enforce an auto-reply explaining a temporary system issue and expected response windows.
2. Backup CSV intake: open a centrally shared, access-controlled spreadsheet (or encrypted CSV stored in S3) to log enquiries with mandatory fields (see template below).
3. Temporary ticketing: if you have a secondary lightweight ticketing tool (Zendesk backup, Freshdesk freemium), start creating tickets with a fixed prefix [CRM-OUT].
4. Call forwarding: forward support and sales lines to agents or use a shared virtual number provider with recording enabled.
5. If reps are remote or at events, consider portable power solutions to keep devices and capture tools online.

Mandatory fields for manual capture (CSV template)

Ensure every capture includes these columns. Use UTC timestamps and generate a GUID per row.

• capture_id (GUID)
• utc_timestamp (ISO 8601)
• source_channel (email, webform, chat, phone, social)
• source_id (original message ID or webhook id if available)
• lead_name
• email
• phone
• company
• message_body (full text)
• attachments_link (secure storage URL)
• utm_params
• initial_priority (P1/P2/P3)
• assigned_to
• sla_deadline_utc
• notes
• content_hash (SHA-256)

Roles & responsibilities during the outage

Clear ownership prevents duplicated work and missed enquiries.

Incident Commander

• Coordinate status updates, escalate to CRM vendor, authorize escalation to executive team if SLA at risk.
• Confirm when to move from manual capture to reconciliation.

Sales Lead

• Assign reps to manually own high-value leads; ensure follow-ups happen within the temporary SLA.
• Keep a live deal board (spreadsheet or Kanban) logging next actions and owner.

Support Lead

• Assign agents to the shared mailbox and phone rotation; keep a 15-minute update cadence for customer-facing statuses.

Ops/Data Owner

• Manage secure storage of CSVs, ensure encryption, apply access controls, and start conflicts/dedupe plan.

Engineering Liaison

• Confirm root cause (customer-side vs vendor-side), coordinate synthetic checks, and record API error payloads for later reconciliation.

Customer & internal comms: practical templates

Use short, factual messages. Preserve trust through transparency.

External auto-reply (email / chat)

Subject: We've received your enquiry — temporary system issue

Body (short): Thank you — we received your message. We're currently experiencing a temporary system outage affecting our CRM. Your enquiry has been recorded and a specialist will respond within [X hours/minutes]. For urgent matters call [phone]. We will update you at regular intervals.

Internal Slack / Teams status message

Tag: #incident-crm-outage-YYYYMMDD — Brief: CRM API failing (500s) since HH:MM UTC. Manual capture active. Sales: assign P1s; Support: monitor shared inbox. Next update in 15 mins.

Prioritization & SLA short-cuts

Set temporary SLAs so teams can triage effectively. These should be more aggressive for high-value or time-sensitive leads.

• P1 (High): initial contact within 15 minutes, resolution or escalation plan within 2 hours.
• P2 (Medium): initial contact within 1 hour, plan within 8 hours.
• P3 (Low): initial contact within 24 hours.

Enforce ownership by assigning every captured row to a named person and a clear next action and timestamp.

Data integrity & security during capture

Manual processes increase risk. Use these guardrails to keep your data trustworthy and compliant.

Preserve canonical source data

• Never paraphrase the original message — copy verbatim into message_body and retain attachments.
• Record the original message ID or webhook ID where possible.
• Capture full header metadata for email (routing, received headers) when feasible.

Immutable logging

• Use write-once files or append-only logs (object storage with versioning enabled).
• Generate a SHA-256 content_hash for each record and store it with the capture; this helps later deduplication and integrity verification.

Security & compliance

• Encrypt CSVs or spreadsheets at rest (SSE for S3 / GCS) and in transit.
• Apply least-privilege access — only the ops and designated reps can read/write fallback stores.
• Log access and edits for audit (who changed what and when).
• Notify your Data Protection Officer if the outage could trigger reporting obligations under GDPR or other local laws.

Mid-phase operations: 15 minutes to 4 hours

Once immediate capture is stable, focus on scoring, routing and minimizing lost conversion.

Automated triage where possible

If you have lightweight automation tools (serverless functions, Zapier/Make connectors), use them to:

• Auto-tag incoming records by source and keywords (enterprise, demo request, pricing).
• Send SMS or Slack push to on-call rep for P1s.

Deal continuity

• Update your manual deal board with probability and next-step deadlines so pipeline reports remain meaningful.
• For active opportunities, use secure notes to capture negotiation state, pricing quotes, and agreed next steps.

Restore & Reconciliation: after CRM is available

Reconciliations are where data integrity is most at risk. Have a plan and follow it strictly.

Sequence to restore

1. Freeze manual edits: stop writing new manual records once you start the reconciliation push to avoid duplicates.
2. Export canonical manual store: produce an immutable export of captured CSVs with checksums and store it in a secure location.
3. Run a dry import test: in a sandbox or with a small sample to verify API behavior and mapping rules.
4. Perform import in batches: smallest to largest; P1s first. Keep logs for each import batch, including CRM-assigned IDs.
5. Execute dedup rules: match on email + phone + content_hash + utc_timestamp window. Create duplicates report for manual review.
6. Rebuild relationships: map manual records to accounts/opportunities according to your canonical logic. Preserve original created_at as a fallback note if CRM prevents backdating.
7. Post-import audit: verify counts, run queries to ensure no records lost, and reconcile pipeline totals against pre-outage metrics.

Conflict resolution rules

• Prefer canonical CRM records where they pre-existed. For new manual records, use capture_id and content_hash to create new records.
• When two records map to the same contact but have divergent data (e.g., different emails), tag for human review and preserve both sources in notes.
• Log every change with actor and timestamp to satisfy audit requirements.

Postmortem & learnings (24–72 hours)

Run a structured review to close the loop and reduce future impact.

1. Collect timelines from incident channel and vendor updates.
2. Quantify impact: number of enquiries captured manually, SLA breaches, revenue-at-risk, customer complaints.
3. Identify root causes and gaps in playbook execution.
4. Create an improvement backlog prioritized by risk and ROI (examples below).
5. Publish a short after-action report to stakeholders and customers if appropriate.

Improvements to reduce future exposure (roadmap items)

Implement these to move from brittle manual responses to resilient continuity.

• Durable inbound queue: a message queue (SQS, Pub/Sub, Kafka, or vendor-agnostic buffer) that persists webhooks until processed.
• Dual-write patterns: write enquiries to both CRM and a raw event store (encrypted object storage) so you always have a canonical inbound log.
• Offline-first capture apps: equip sales with PWA or mobile app that caches leads locally and syncs when connectivity returns.
• Automated health checks & synthetic monitoring: multi-region checks that alert before customers notice.
• Chaos & incident drills: schedule quarterly CRM failover drills involving sales, support, and ops.
• AI-assisted reconciliation: use ML for deduplication and to map manual captures to CRM entities faster, with human-in-the-loop review for edge cases.

Also perform a strip-the-fat one-page stack audit to remove brittle integrations and redundant agents that increase outage blast radius.

Real-world example (anonymized)

During an infrastructure provider incident in January 2026, a mid-market SaaS company activated this runbook. They captured 1,200 enquiries in a 6-hour outage via a shared mailbox + CSV approach. By enforcing P1 assignment and a 15-minute initial contact SLA, the company converted 18% of P1s into demos within 48 hours — a conversion rate that matched their normal baseline. Key success factors: pre-defined templates, encrypted S3 store with versioning, and a small reconciliation script that matched manual records to CRM by email and content_hash.

Checklist: Quick reference (printable)

• Declare incident & open incident channel (0–5 min)
• Activate shared mailbox + CSV capture (0–15 min)
• Assign incident roles & P1 owners (0–15 min)
• Apply temporary SLAs (0–30 min)
• Secure storage + content_hash + UTC timestamp (ongoing)
• Periodic updates every 15 minutes to customers & internal teams
• Freeze manual edits before reconciliation
• Reconcile by batch with dry-run first
• Run postmortem and schedule improvements

Final takeaways — make outages a managed event, not a crisis

Outages are inevitable, but customer loss is avoidable. The difference is preparation: clear roles, a secure manual capture process, short-term SLAs, and a tested reconciliation path. In 2026, buyer expectations are higher and regulatory scrutiny is stricter — your playbook must therefore balance speed with data integrity and compliance.

Call to action

Use this runbook as your baseline and run a tabletop drill this quarter. If you want a templated CSV, SLA checklist, or a pre-built incident channel scaffold for your org, contact our team at enquiry.cloud for a ready-to-deploy outage playbook and reconciliation tooling. Don’t wait for the next outage — make continuity your competitive advantage.

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