# Assess customer impact for an incident

Record incident impact and maintain the separate affected-customer list.

## Before you start

### Intended audience

Incident commanders and customer-response owners.

### Required permissions

You need permission to update incident impact and customer records.


### Prerequisites

- Open the incident. Select Customer impact.

## Procedure

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### Assess incident impact

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1. **Open the assessment.** Select Edit assessment.

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2. **Choose the impact state.** Select Not assessed, No direct impact, or Direct impact. Use only evidence that applies to this incident.

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3. **Write the impact summary.** Enter the Impact summary in the Impact narrative field. Describe the confirmed external effect and its operational scope.

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4. **Save the assessment.** Select Save impact assessment. The incident header and Customer impact tab show the new state.

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### Record affected customers

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5. **Add an affected customer.** Select Add customer. Enter the customer identity and incident-specific impact evidence.

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6. **Review enrichment.** Review identity and enrichment status in the affected-customer table. Keep it separate from incident impact and recovery evidence.

## You are done when…

The incident has an explicit impact state, a concise impact summary, and a separate customer record when needed.

## Troubleshooting

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### Customer impact is still shown as unknown.

Return to Customer impact and choose an assessment status. Keep the status unknown when evidence is not sufficient, but add the current evidence gap to the summary.

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### A customer row cannot be added.

Check the required customer fields and use the existing customer record or provider search shown by the form. Do not substitute a private message or unverified identifier.

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### The correct status is not known.

Select Not assessed. Update the state after evidence confirms direct impact or no direct impact.

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### Customer enrichment is pending.

Keep the incident impact current. Treat the pending identity state as a separate data-quality issue.

## Related articles

- **Recommended next task:** [Use the incident overview](https://tellagen.com/help/use-incident-overview)
- [Set an incident's scope and ownership](https://tellagen.com/help/update-incident-scope)
- [Configure integrations](https://tellagen.com/help/configure-integrations)


## Continue through the incident lifecycle

- **Previous task:** [Use the incident overview](https://tellagen.com/help/use-incident-overview)
- **Next task:** [Record a timeline event and evidence](https://tellagen.com/help/record-timeline-evidence)
- [Back to Support Center](https://tellagen.com/help#help-search)

## Last verified date

2026-08-29