Library › Customer Support & Success AI › Customer support teams
Ask a manager to approve a refund in three lines
- For Customer support teams
- You practice Saying who it's for
- Time about 5 minutes
- Level Beginner
About this exercise
Write an approval request for your manager, Priya. Exactly three lines starting "Request:", "Policy check:" and "Recommend:". Plain text, under 60 words. Recommend must be exactly one of Approve or Decline, followed by a reason of 8 words or fewer.
Common mistakes when you ask AI for this
- Skipping the limit. The AI doesn't say why manager approval is needed. Try: Say: "Policy check: the $100 agent limit and the 60-day defect rule."
- Long reason. The AI writes a paragraph after Recommend. Try: Say: "Reason 8 words or fewer."
- Free-form message. The AI writes a chatty email to Priya. 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 labels
- Limits the reason
Related exercises
- Acknowledge an executive escalation within the hour (Customer Support & Success AI · Executives)
- Age a returns queue in business days and flag the ones over the limit (Customer Support & Success AI · Customer support teams)
- Announce a feature sunset with the notice period worked out (Customer Support & Success AI · Customer success managers)
- Announce a feature to admins without hype (Customer Support & Success AI · Customer success managers)
- Announce planned maintenance in four labeled lines (Customer Support & Success AI · IT teams)