To effectively manage service incidents, the first step is to identify the root cause of the performance degradation by analyzing logs and metrics. This approach enables you to implement a targeted solution and prevent the problem from reoccurring. Scaling the application vertically might temporarily alleviate the issue, but it does not address the root cause. Similarly, deleting and recreating the affected containers or creating a new GKE cluster in a different region are not efficient first steps as they do not tackle the underlying issue directly.