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Tailor one outage message for three customer segments
- For Managers and team leads
- You practice Saying who it's for
- Time about 5 minutes
- Level Intermediate
About this exercise
Write the same outage message for three segments as exactly three lines starting "Enterprise:", "Mid-market:" and "Self-serve:". Each is under 28 words and follows its segment rule. All say the issue started at 10:05 AM and the next update is at 12:00 PM Eastern. Plain text, no emojis.
Common mistakes when you ask AI for this
- Giving the cause. The old message names a database fault; the cause is unconfirmed. Try: Say: "No cause, no credits."
- Same message for everyone. The AI copies one text three times. Try: Say: "Follow each segment rule: call, reply, status page."
- Wrong layout. The AI writes a heading and a long text. Try: Name the three labels.
- Getting markdown back. AI adds bold and headings by default, which show up as stray symbols where this is pasted. Try: Say "plain text, no bold, no headings, no asterisks".
- Trusting the AI to count words. AI is bad at counting and usually runs long, so a vague "keep it short" lands well over the limit. Try: Cap each part instead of the total, for example "each line under 15 words".
What a strong prompt includes
- Asks for plain text
- Sets a length limit
- Names the segment labels
- Bans cause and credits
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