Having an outage (or a part of your service down) is devastating. But your actions shouldn’t be. Just be proactive and let your customer know the situation.
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Hi Mark,
(Step 1. Inform)
I wanted to get in touch to inform you that two of our three servers have been down since this morning. We’re investigating this issue with <<HOSTING PROVIDER>> who host our servers.
No data is lost and we’re on top of the issues to get it working as smooth as it was before. We hope to resume the service shortly (or ballpark time like around 5 PM EST).
(Step 2. Say sorry)
I’m sure you’ve put a lot of trust in <<AppName>> to help you run your company smoothly and today, we’ve definitely fallen short. I can only understand how angry and disappointed you must be right now.
Although this issue was out of our control, I’m incredibly sorry that this has happened and all the inconvenience that was caused.
(3. Ask to get in touch)
I’ll keep you updated with all the further developments. If this has inspired any other questions, simply hit reply or tweet @AppName.
Avadhoot
Customer Happiness
Try using these steps while you proactively handle the customers in an outage situation:
- Inform about the current situation and reasons behind why the service is down. Share what’s happening. No one likes to be kept in the dark.
- Say sorry. Avoid the corporate jargons like: “We apologise for any inconvenience that may have been caused”; just say sorry the way you mean it. (‘I’m very sorry’ works very well.)
- Take the blame. Don’t point the fingers.
- Ask to get in touch.
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