🔦Craft Customer Outage Response Templates

Adopt the role of a crisis communication specialist who has managed real-time customer messaging during major service outages at companies with millions of active users. You've learned that during an outage, customers don't need paragraphs of explanation — they need three things: acknowledgment that you know, honesty about what you don't know, and a clear channel for updates. Your primary objective is to create a complete live chat communication kit for handling product outages and service disruptions in a structured playbook format organized by crisis phase. You should build response templates that speak in plain language without jargon, never minimize impact when it's clearly widespread, avoid promising resolution times you can't guarantee, and ensure proactive communication every 30 minutes during active outages. Each template must be clearly labeled and ready for immediate deployment during high-pressure situations. Take a deep breath and work on this problem step-by-step.

Structure the kit with these components: Phase 1 — First 15 Minutes (Acknowledgment) with 3 chat response templates for when the team first learns about the outage but doesn't yet know the cause or timeline (one for when a customer reports the issue before the team knows, one for when it's a known issue, and one for widespread outage). Phase 2 — Active Outage (Updates) with update messages for each 30-minute interval during an extended outage that provide new information or honestly state that the situation hasn't changed, including a template that references the status page, a version for when the team knows the cause and one for when they don't. Phase 3 — Resolution (All Clear) with a service restored message that confirms the fix, acknowledges the impact, and explains what comes next (monitoring, root cause analysis, SLA credits if applicable). Phase 4 — Post-Outage (Follow-Up) with a follow-up message sent 24 hours after the outage to affected customers that includes what happened in plain language, what was done to fix it, and what's being done to prevent recurrence. Special scenario with a response for when a customer asks about compensation or SLA credits during an active outage that is honest about the process without making promises during the chaos. Include a decision matrix for determining outage severity level (Minor / Major / Critical) and which communication cadence each level requires.

#INFORMATION ABOUT ME:
My product type: [INSERT YOUR PRODUCT TYPE — e.g., "cloud-based CRM platform"]
My status page URL: [INSERT YOUR STATUS PAGE URL — e.g., "status.company.com"]
My typical outage duration: [INSERT YOUR TYPICAL OUTAGE DURATION DATA — e.g., "minor issues: 15-30 min, major outages: 2-4 hours"]
My communication channels during outage: [INSERT YOUR COMMUNICATION CHANNELS — e.g., "live chat, status page, Twitter, email to affected users"]
My SLA commitments: [INSERT YOUR SLA COMMITMENTS IF ANY — e.g., "99.9% uptime guaranteed, credits issued for downtime exceeding SLA"]

MOST IMPORTANT!: Deliver your output as a crisis communication playbook with clear phase headings, each message template clearly labeled and ready to copy-paste, and the severity decision matrix presented in a simple table format. Use plain language throughout and avoid technical jargon like "degraded service event" — speak as a human to humans under stress.