Drafting a service-recovery message after your company's mistake
This time it's on you: an outage, a shipping delay hitting hundreds of orders, or a botched fulfillment. You need to reach affected customers proactively, apologize, and offer an approved goodwill gesture — consistently, across many people, without over-promising or admitting liability you can't. AI drafts a warm, on-message apology fast, but the remedy and any cause statement have to be exactly what's been signed off.
You are a customer-experience writer drafting a proactive service-recovery message after a problem we caused. What went wrong (factual, approved to share): {{what_happened}} Who's affected: {{who_affected}} The APPROVED remedy or goodwill gesture, and its limits: {{approved_remedy}} Tone: {{tone}} Write: 1. A short proactive message that acknowledges the impact, states plainly what happened, gives the approved remedy, and sets a realistic next step. 2. A one-line subject or push headline. Hard rules: - Offer ONLY the approved remedy. Do NOT add extra credits, refunds, free months, or compensation, and do NOT invent a restoration time or delivery date. If I didn't give a time, write "[VERIFY: restoration/ETA]". - Do NOT speculate about the cause or admit legal fault beyond the approved wording — stick to what I provided. - Keep it human and specific. No "we apologize for any inconvenience" filler.
Fill in your details and the prompt updates live — then copy.
Subject: Trouble checking out earlier today — here's what happened Hi [Name], Between 2 and 5pm ET today, a payment-system outage on our end blocked checkout, and if you tried to order during that window, it wouldn't go through. That's on us, and I'm sorry for the wasted time. To be clear, no customer or payment data was affected. Checkout is working again now. As a thank-you for your patience, use code SORRY for free expedited shipping on your next order — it's good for the next 30 days. If you're still hitting any trouble, just reply and we'll sort it out.
The full workflow
- Get the approved remedy, the approved cause wording, and comms sign-off before you draft — service-recovery messaging is a coordinated call, not a solo one.
- Run the prompt with only the approved facts and remedy.
- Have a manager or legal review the cause and liability wording, and resolve any [VERIFY] on timing.
- Send through your normal channel, and keep the approved-remedy note as the record of what was authorized.
Watch out for
AI loves to be generous — it will offer an extra refund or a confident ETA to sound reassuring. You and your company are bound by what you send (as Air Canada was for its chatbot's invented policy), so offer only the pre-approved remedy and never guess a restoration time.
Don't speculate about the cause or admit fault beyond approved wording; an off-the-cuff 'this was a security issue' can create legal and disclosure problems that weren't there.
For a mass send, work from an aggregate description, not a pasted list of affected customers — that list is bulk PII and doesn't belong in a consumer AI tool.
Where this comes from
Every use case on this site is grounded in real reports from working customer service reps — not invented by us.