Troubleshooting
A Marketing Incident Log for Wrong Information and Broken Customer Journeys
A practical workflow for Indian small businesses to manage recurring marketing work with clear ownership, checks, and realistic limits.
By Chamko Research Team Updated 2 min read
Quick answer
Teams fix visible mistakes but never document causes or check where else the mistake appears. This guide provides a repeatable process, explicit ownership, and evidence for deciding whether the work is complete.
Quick answer: Teams fix visible mistakes but never document causes or check where else the mistake appears. This guide provides a repeatable process, explicit ownership, and evidence for deciding whether the work is complete.
Define a marketing incident
An incident is a customer-facing error or failure that needs a tracked response: incorrect hours, a broken enquiry link, a false offer, an outdated address, an inappropriate public reply, or a profile change that does not match the approved facts. Not every typo is an incident; prioritise by customer impact and urgency.
Response sequence
1. Contain: pause promotion or remove/correct the misleading item where appropriate. 2. Verify: confirm the correct fact with its owner. 3. Correct: update the affected channel using its supported workflow. 4. Check propagation: inspect every channel where the same information was reused. 5. Communicate: if customers were materially affected, use an appropriate channel to clarify the correct information. 6. Prevent recurrence: record the cause and change the process.
Severity model
- Critical: customers may travel to a closed location, pay the wrong price, or be unable to reach the business during an urgent service window.
- High: a booking path fails, a campaign sends people to the wrong branch, or a time-limited offer is materially wrong.
- Normal: a nonessential asset is outdated but the core customer path works.
These categories are an internal starting point. A business should define its own response expectations and escalation contacts.
Incident record
| Field | Record |
|---|---|
| Incident ID / detected at | Unique ID and time |
| What customer saw | Exact public value or broken path |
| Correct value | Confirmed by the authorised owner |
| Channels affected | Profile, website, booking page, social, printed material |
| Containment / correction | Action and timestamp |
| Root cause | Stale source, missed approval, staff handover, tool failure |
| Prevention | Specific process change |
| Closure check | Evidence that the live customer path works |
Do not close too early
A corrected source document does not prove that a live profile or scheduled post changed. A successful edit submission does not prove that the new value is already visible. Check the live result and record any pending status.
Review incidents monthly
Look for repeat causes rather than blaming individuals by default. If the same wrong offer appears in three channels, the likely improvement may be a better change register and expiry check—not another reminder to “be careful.”
Checklist
- Customer impact assessed
- Correct fact confirmed
- Live error contained or corrected
- All reused channels checked
- Cause and prevention recorded
- Closure evidence captured
Next step
Start logging high-impact incidents immediately. After a month, use the pattern to decide which process needs redesign first.
Sources
- Understand what happens to Business Profile edits — Shows why submission and live acceptance status must be distinguished.
- Business Profile policy overview — Explains that policy violations can affect content visibility or profile access.