Something went wrong. Here's how to say it.
The longer you wait, the worse it gets.
Service failures happen. Outages happen. Mistakes happen. What separates trusted partners from vendors on probation is how you communicate when things go wrong. Silence breeds suspicion. Spin breeds resentment. Honesty - delivered quickly and clearly - builds trust.
The scenario:
Something went wrong on your watch - an outage, a missed SLA, a mistake that affected the client. You need to communicate it before they find out another way.
The prompt:
You're communicating a service failure to a client.
Context: [paste what happened, impact, and current status]
Write a 150-word email that:
- Opens with the facts (what happened, when, who's affected)
- Takes ownership without excessive apologising
- Explains what you're doing to fix it and prevent recurrence
- Gives them a timeline for next update
- Offers a call if they want to discuss
Tone: Direct, accountable, calm. No defensiveness.