Draft a CEO apology to an enterprise customer after an outage

About this exercise

Draft a letter from the CEO to the customer contact, in plain text, under 170 words. State the outage facts exactly, apologize once, say what you will do next with the dates, and sign off as "Priya Raman, CEO". Do not blame any third party, do not name an amount of compensation, and do not guess at business losses. The last line before the signature is exactly: Draft for Legal review before sending.

Common mistakes when you ask AI for this

• Blaming the vendor. The AI mentions the hosting vendor as the cause. Try: Say: "Do not blame or mention any third party."
• Offering compensation. The AI promises credits or repeats $200k. Try: Say: "Do not name any amount or guess at business losses."
• Apologizing repeatedly. The AI apologizes in every paragraph. Try: Say: "Apologize once."
• Skipping dates. The AI says "soon". Try: Say: "Give each next step with its date."
• Missing the Legal line. The AI signs off without it. Try: Say: "Last line before the signature exactly: Draft for Legal review before sending."
• Markdown. The AI bolds key facts. Try: Say: "Plain text."
• Trusting the AI to count words. AI is bad at counting. Ask for a total word limit and it often lands over it. Try: Cap each part instead, for example: "each line under 15 words."

What a strong prompt includes

• States the facts
• Bans blame and amounts
• Asks for dated next steps
• Gives the Legal line
• Sets the signature

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