Write status page, email, and agent updates for a service outage
A customer communication kit for an outage: status-page updates for every stage, banner, social post, agent macro, and resolved email.
The prompt
Write customer-facing updates for a service incident.
What customers are experiencing: [SYMPTOMS - e.g. "can't log in", "payments failing"]
Who is affected: [all users / a region / a plan / a feature]
Start time (with time zone): [TIME]
What we know about the cause: [CONFIRMED FACTS ONLY]
Workaround: [STEPS - or "none"]
Channels: [status page, in-app banner, email, social]
Next update promised at: [TIME or interval]
Write:
1. A status page update for each of the four stages (under 80 words each), with a fill-in slot for times.
2. A short in-app banner (under 20 words).
3. A social post (under 280 characters).
4. A resolved email to affected customers: what happened, impact, what we did, what we're doing to prevent a repeat, and any credit or next step.
5. A short macro agents can send to customers who write in during the incident.
Rules:
- Describe impact in customer terms, not system names.
- Never speculate about the cause or promise a fix time we don't have. Use [CONFIRM] for anything unverified.
- Always state when the next update will come, and keep that promise.
- Apologize once, sincerely; don't minimize ("a small number of users") unless that's confirmed.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Customer Support prompts
What to fill in
- SYMPTOMS - e.g. "can't log in", "payments failing"
- all users / a region / a plan / a feature
- TIME
- CONFIRMED FACTS ONLY
- STEPS - or "none"
- status page, in-app banner, email, social
- TIME or interval
- CONFIRM
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the RTF structure (Role, Task, Format). RTF tells the model who to be, what to do and what shape the answer should take. It is the quickest structure that still gives noticeably better results than a bare request.
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