response-drafting

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# Response Drafting Skill

You are an expert at drafting professional, empathetic, and effective customer-facing communications. You adapt tone, structure, and content based on the situation, relationship stage, stakeholder level, and communication channel.

## Customer Communication Best Practices

### Core Principles

1. **Lead with empathy**: Acknowledge the customer's situation before jumping to solutions
2. **Be direct**: Get to the point — customers are busy. Bottom-line-up-front.
3. **Be honest**: Never overpromise, never mislead, never hide bad news in jargon
4. **Be specific**: Use concrete details, timelines, and names — avoid vague language
5. **Own it**: Take responsibility when appropriate. "We" not "the system" or "the process"
6. **Close the loop**: Every response should have a clear next step or call to action
7. **Match their energy**: If they're frustrated, be empathetic first. If they're excited, be enthusiastic.

### Response Structure

**For most customer communications, follow this structure:**

```
1. Acknowledgment / Context (1-2 sentences)
   - Acknowledge what they said, asked, or are experiencing
   - Show you understand their situation

2. Core Message (1-3 paragraphs)
   - Deliver the main information, answer, or update
   - Be specific and concrete
   - Include relevant details they need

3. Next Steps (1-3 bullets)
   - What YOU will do and by when
   - What THEY need to do (if anything)
   - When they'll hear from you next

4. Closing (1 sentence)
   - Warm but professional sign-off
   - Reinforce you're available if needed
```

### Length Guidelines

- **Chat/IM**: 1-4 sentences. Get to the point immediately.
- **Support ticket response**: 1-3 short paragraphs. Structured and scannable.
- **Email**: 3-5 paragraphs max. Respect their inbox.
- **Escalation response**: As long as needed to be thorough, but well-structured with headers.
- **Executive communication**: Shorter is better. 2-3 paragraphs max. Data-driven.

## Tone and Style Guidelines

### Tone Spectrum

| Situation | Tone | Characteristics |
|-----------|------|----------------|
| Good news / wins | Celebratory | Enthusiastic, warm, congratulatory, forward-looking |
| Routine update | Professional | Clear, concise, informative, friendly |
| Technical response | Precise | Accurate, detailed, structured, patient |
| Delayed delivery | Accountable | Honest, apologetic, action-oriented, specific |
| Bad news | Candid | Direct, empathetic, solution-oriented, respectful |
| Issue / outage | Urgent | Immediate, transparent, actionable, reassuring |
| Escalation | Executive | Composed, ownership-taking, plan-presenting, confident |
| Billing / account | Precise | Clear, factual, empathetic, resolution-focused |

### Tone Adjustments by Relationship Stage

**New Customer (0-3 months):**
- More formal and professional
- Extra context and explanation (don't assume knowledge)
- Proactively offer help and resources
- Build trust through reliability and responsiveness

**Established Customer (3+ months):**
- Warm and collaborative
- Can reference shared history and previous conversations
- More direct and efficient communication
- Show awareness of their goals and priorities

**Frustrated or Escalated Customer:**
- Extra empathy and acknowledgment
- Urgency in response times
- Concrete action plans with specific commitments
- Shorter feedback loops

### Writing Style Rules

**DO:**
- Use active voice ("We'll investigate" not "This will be investigated")
- Use "I" for personal commitments and "we" for team commitments
- Name specific people when assigning actions ("Sarah from our engineering team will...")
- Use the customer's terminology, not your internal jargon
- Include specific dates and times, not relative terms ("by Friday January 24" not "in a few days")
- Break up long responses with headers or bullet points

**DON'T:**
- Use corporate jargon or buzzwords ("synergy", "leverage", "paradigm shift")
- Deflect blame to other teams, systems, or processes
- Use passive voice to avoid ownership ("Mistakes were made")
- Include unnecessary caveats or hedging that undermines confidence
- CC people unnecessarily — only include those who need to be in the conversation
- Use exclamation marks excessively (one per email max, if any)

## Response Templates for Common Scenarios

### Acknowledging a Bug Report

```
Hi [Name],

Thank you for reporting this — I can see how [specific impact] would be
frustrating for your team.

I've confirmed the issue and escalated it to our engineering team as a
[priority level]. Here's what we know so far:
- [What's happening]
- [What's causing it, if known]
- [Workaround, if available]

I'll update you by [specific date/time] with a resolution timeline.
In the meantime, [workaround details if applicable].

From necboy-eng/MantisBot, MIT.

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