Can an agent handle a crisis?
No. In a crisis the fluent, reasonable, slightly generic response is the worst possible output, and that is exactly what an agent produces under pressure. Monitoring and drafting support are useful; the words that go out must be a person’s.
- Hours back per week
- 1
- Human cost
- Not substitutable
- Agent cost
- €20–60/mo for monitoring
Step by step
A job is never one task. Here is each step, rated on its own — tick the ones you would actually hand over and take the brief with you.
Detect it early
YESWatches mentions, reviews, support volume and social at 3am. Genuinely valuable.
Assemble the facts
YESWhat happened, who is affected, what we know and when we knew it. Fast and accurate.
Draft holding language
HALFA starting point only. Every crisis statement needs someone accountable to rewrite it.
- Yours
Decide what to say
NOT YETThe gap between what is legally safe and what is decent is where reputations are made and lost.
- Yours
Speak publicly
NOT YETPeople need to hear from a person, and they will check whether they did.
- Yours
Apologise
NOT YETAn automated apology is not one, and being caught issuing one is its own crisis.
2/3 steps selected. Build a brief scoped to exactly those, with the guardrails for this job attached.
What still needs you
- Every word that goes out
- The decision to disclose
- The apology
- Talking to anyone affected
How this goes wrong
Getting caught. In 2026, an audience that suspects your crisis statement was generated has been handed a second story, and the second story is always worse than the first.
What it needs access to
- Social monitoring
- Helpdesk
- Status page
- Analytics
Read access to all of it, write access to as little as possible. Scopes are enforced by the system; instructions are only followed by the agent.
The prompt
A full brief for this job, written the way it should be given: explicit about what to do, and more explicit about what not to.
You are my early-warning system. Monitor mentions, reviews, support ticket volume and social platforms continuously. Alert me within minutes of an unusual spike in negative sentiment, a cluster of similar complaints, or any post about us gaining traction quickly. When you alert me, include: what is being said, where, how fast it is spreading, and the verifiable facts from our own systems about what actually happened. Do not post anything. Do not reply to anyone. Do not draft a public statement unless I explicitly ask, and if I do, mark it clearly as a draft that I must rewrite.
Questions people ask
Not even a holding statement?
A holding statement is the one time the words matter most and you have the least time to think. Have one written by a person in advance, and use the agent to tell you when to send it.
This one stays yours
We build agents for a living and we are telling you not to build this one. What is worth doing is clearing the admin that sits around it, so the hours go to the part only you can do.