Lesson 203 · 2 min
Apologising to a customer
A real apology names the mistake, takes responsibility, says what you are doing to fix it and stops there.
When your business gets something wrong, the customer wants three things: to know you understand what happened, to have it fixed and to trust it will not happen again.
AI drafts tend to be long and full of stock phrases like "we value your feedback". Ask for a short apology that names the exact problem, owns it without excuses and gives the fix with a date.
Avoid "we are sorry if you were upset". It puts the problem on the customer. "We sent the wrong size, and that is our mistake" is better.
Before you promise refunds or compensation, check what your company allows. And read the final version as if you were the customer: does it sound like a person or a template?
Do it now
Write one honest apology
- 1. Recall a real or likely mistake, such as a late delivery.
- 2. Run the prompt below.
- 3. Delete any sentence that would sound fake if a friend said it to you.
Write a short apology to a customer. What went wrong: [MISTAKE]. Fix: [WHAT WE WILL DO AND WHEN]. What we changed so it does not happen again: [CHANGE]. Under 120 words. No phrases like "we value your feedback" or "sorry for any inconvenience". No excuses.
Quick check
Keep going
Next →Writing a job postWords from this lesson
- Prompt
- The instruction or question you give an AI. Clearer prompts with context usually get much better answers.
- Generative AI
- AI that produces new text, images, audio, video or code, rather than only sorting or scoring existing things.