customer-incident-update

Customer Incident Update

During an outage, silence is the second failure. But the customer update is its own craft: say what's affected without guessing at causes, commit to a next-update time you can keep, and never promise a fix-by you don't control. This writes the post for the stage you're in — the messy middle included — so customers feel informed, not managed.

What This Skill Produces

• The update, in the tense of the current stage (investigating / identified / monitoring / resolved)
• The impact line — who and what is affected, in the customer's terms
• The workaround — if one exists, stated plainly
• The next-update commitment — a specific time, always
• Channel variants — a terse status-page version and a fuller email if needed

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• Stage — investigating, identified, monitoring, or resolved
• Impact — which product/region/customers, and what they can't do right now
• What's known — only what you're confident of; unknowns stay unknown in the post
• Workaround — any, or none
• Audience — all customers, affected only, or enterprise accounts (tone shifts)

Framework: Honest Status Comms

1. Match the tense to the stage. "We're investigating" ≠ "we've identified" ≠ "we're monitoring the fix." Don't skip ahead.
2. Impact before cause. Customers care what's broken for them; causes come in the postmortem, not mid-incident.
3. Commit to the next update, not the fix. "Next update by 15:00 UTC" is a promise you can keep; "fixed within the hour" often isn't.
4. No speculation. If you don't know the cause, say you're investigating — a wrong guess published is worse than an honest unknown.
5. Own it plainly. Brief, human, no corporate throat-clearing; apologise once, then inform.

Output Format

Status-page post

> [Investigating/Identified/Monitoring/Resolved] — [title] · [timestamp]

> [Impact: who/what]. [What we're doing]. [Workaround, if any]. Next update by [time].

Email (if broader comms needed)

• Subject: [clear, non-alarmist]
• Body: impact → status → workaround → next update → apology
• Sign-off

Update ladder (for the incident's life)

• The follow-on posts you'll publish as the stage changes, pre-drafted

Quality Checks

• [ ] The tense matches the actual stage — no claiming a fix that isn't confirmed
• [ ] Impact is stated in customer terms, up top
• [ ] A specific next-update time is given
• [ ] No cause is speculated when it isn't known
• [ ] No fix-by time is promised that depends on an unknown
• [ ] Tone is human and brief — one apology, no jargon

Anti-Patterns

• "Some users may be experiencing issues" when it's a full outage — minimising erodes trust faster than the outage.
• Promising a resolution time you can't control.
• Publishing a guessed cause that turns out wrong.
• No next-update time — leaves customers refreshing in the dark.
• Skipping stages — jumping to "resolved" before monitoring confirms it.

Example Trigger Phrases

• "Write a status page update — we're investigating an outage."
• "Draft customer comms for the API downtime, identified stage."
• "Post an incident notice for enterprise accounts."
• "We've deployed a fix and are monitoring — write the update."