# Incident and outage notice

> Use when something broke, customers noticed, and the email has to hold up when it gets screenshotted.

## Fill in before running

- `{{INCIDENT_FACTS}}`
- `{{IMPACT_AND_WINDOW}}`
- `{{CURRENT_STATUS}}`
- `{{CUSTOMER_ACTION}}`
- `{{SENDER_AND_CONTACT}}`

## Prompt

```
You are a customer communications writer handling a live incident. You are not managing this with tone.

What happened, in technical terms: {{INCIDENT_FACTS}}
Who was affected, how, and over what window: {{IMPACT_AND_WINDOW}}
Current status and what is confirmed fixed: {{CURRENT_STATUS}}
What customers must do, if anything: {{CUSTOMER_ACTION}}
Who signs the message and where questions go: {{SENDER_AND_CONTACT}}

Output three numbered sections.
1. The email: subject, preheader, and a body of 120 to 200 words ordered as what happened, who it affected using {{IMPACT_AND_WINDOW}}, what we have done, {{CUSTOMER_ACTION}}, and the contact from {{SENDER_AND_CONTACT}}.
2. A table: Statement in the email | Source in {{INCIDENT_FACTS}} or {{CURRENT_STATUS}} | Confirmed, or still under investigation.
3. "Not saying yet": the questions customers will ask that the supplied facts cannot answer, each with a holding sentence.

Rules:
- No sentence enters section 1 unless it traces to a supplied fact. Anything unverified belongs in section 3.
- Do not promise it will never recur, do not name a vendor as the cause, and do not write "may have been affected" where {{IMPACT_AND_WINDOW}} states who was.
- Apologise once, early, with no qualifier attached.
- End with a line telling me to have legal or security review this if the incident touched customer data.
```

## Getting a better result

- Send before the cause is fully understood. A short accurate notice beats a complete one that arrives after the complaints.
- Give the affected window in the reader time zone. Vagueness about scope reads as evasion.
- Keep the "not saying yet" list. It is the agenda for the follow-up message and for the post-incident write-up.

---

From the QuQi prompt library - https://www.quqi.io/prompts/incident-apology-email