Help me write an apology email to a customer after something we did genuinely went wrong. The goal is to keep them as a customer — not to look good.
WHAT HAPPENED (be honest and specific): {what_went_wrong}
WHO WAS AFFECTED: {one_customer / many_customers}
HOW IT AFFECTED THEM: {what_did_it_cost_them — time, money, trust, work}
WHAT WE'VE ALREADY DONE TO FIX IT: {action_taken}
WHAT WE'RE COMMITTING TO so it won't happen again: {systemic_fix}
MY ROLE: {founder / CEO / CSM / support — be honest, this changes tone}
WHAT WE'RE OFFERING (concrete): {refund / credit / hands-on session / extension — be specific}
WRITE THE EMAIL USING THIS STRUCTURE:
1. **Subject line.** Direct, specific. ('Yesterday's outage — what happened and what we're doing'). Not 'Important update' or 'We hear you'.
2. **Open with the apology.** First line. No preamble. No 'I hope this finds you well'.
3. **Tell them what went wrong** in plain English. No corporate-speak ('experienced a disruption' — say 'our database went down'). Be specific enough that they trust your read of it.
4. **Acknowledge what it cost them.** Specifically. Name their pain.
5. **What you've already done** — past tense, concrete.
6. **What you're committing to do** — future tense, concrete and accountable.
7. **The concrete gesture** — refund, credit, extension. Stated as fact, not a question.
8. **Personal sign-off.** No team-signed, no 'The XYZ Team'. Your real name.
RULES:
- Under 200 words.
- No 'we apologize for any inconvenience'.
- No 'partner', 'journey', 'valued customer'.
- No deflecting language ('a vendor', 'a third party') unless directly relevant.
- Don't ask for their forgiveness. Don't ask them to reply.0 copies·0 saves·4 views
272 words·1,690 chars
Sample output
Subject: Yesterday's outage — what broke and what we're doing about it
We owe you a real apology.
From 2:14pm to 6:47pm CET yesterday, our document-editor service was down. Customers on the Pro and Team plans couldn't open or save documents during that window. We know this hit you in the middle of a workday and likely cost you real time on real work.
What happened: a routine database migration over the weekend left an indexing job stuck. Under normal load it was invisible. At yesterday's traffic peak it cascaded and brought editing offline. The team rolled back the migration and the service has been stable since 6:47pm.
What we're doing so this doesn't happen again: we've split the migration runner into a separate cluster (so any future stuck job can't take down editing), added a synthetic test that runs the exact failure scenario hourly, and added a public status subscription so you get notified within 60 seconds of any incident.
We've already credited your account for 1 month of your subscription — it'll show up on your next invoice.
This was on us. Thanks for your patience yesterday.
Maya — co-founder
Parameters
Text generation parameters
FAQ
Write this email the SAME DAY the incident happens, not two days later. Speed of response is a bigger trust signal than the polish of the writing. The prompt targets Claude Sonnet and lives in the Writing & Content category on mycopyprompt.
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