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Write the outage update while you are still fixing it

Today

Half the client's staff cannot get to the file server, your senior tech is elbow deep in it, and the owner is calling you every twenty minutes. The update you send is either three words or a paragraph that promises a restore time nobody has confirmed.

With Claude

You give Claude what is confirmed and what is not, and get a first notification under 150 words, two versions of the next holding update, and an internal note on what you are not saying yet. It also flags anything that should go through counsel before it goes to the client.

The prompt

Paste this into claude.ai and replace anything in brackets.

You are helping a managed service provider write client communication during an active incident. I am giving you only what we know right now.

What is happening, in my words: [describe the symptom, the affected systems, and what is confirmed versus suspected]
Who is affected: [which client, which sites, how many users, which business functions are down]
Start time and current status: [when it started, what we have tried, what is working now]
What we do not know yet: [be honest here]
Workaround: [describe it, or write NONE]
Next update I can commit to: [time]
Audience: [for example the client's owner, their entire staff, or one department]

Write three things:
1. The first notification, under 150 words, in plain language. Lead with what the reader cannot do right now and what to do instead. State what we know, label anything unconfirmed as unconfirmed, and give the time of the next update. Do not speculate about cause and do not state a restore time I did not give you.
2. The next holding update in two versions, one for real progress and one for no progress yet. The no progress version still has to be worth opening.
3. A short internal note for my team: who owns client communication, what we are not saying externally yet and why, and what we need to confirm before the next update.

Then, before I send anything, list every element of this incident that suggests data was accessed, copied, encrypted, or lost, or that a regulated system was involved. If you find any of those, say clearly that the client notification needs to go through the client's counsel and ours first, and stop drafting external wording about cause or scope.

Rules: no cause claims, no blame, no invented timelines, and never write that data was not affected unless I have told you that is confirmed.

What to skip in IT services firms and MSPs

  • Credentials and live infrastructure detail. Passwords, API keys, certificates, connection strings, firewall or VPN configs, network diagrams with real addressing, and security assessment or penetration test findings do not belong in a chat window, yours or your client's. On Free, Pro, and Max accounts whether your chats are used to improve Claude is a setting you control in Privacy Settings, and Anthropic does not use Team or Enterprise account data to train its models by default. Either way, a secret that leaves your password manager is a secret you no longer control. Reference credentials by where they live, never by value.
  • Security configuration and compliance attestations. Claude will hand you a confident conditional access policy, firewall rule set, or control mapping that looks right and is wrong in the details that decide whether it holds. It does not know the client's real environment, the current version of the framework, or what your assessor will accept. Use it to draft the explanation and the client facing summary, have a named engineer verify configuration against vendor documentation, and never sign an attestation or a security questionnaire on the strength of a chat.
  • Incident communication that carries legal weight. Once an event looks like unauthorized access, exfiltration, ransomware, or loss of regulated data, the message stops being a service update. Breach notification requirements vary by state and by contract, the clocks are short, and most cyber policies require you to involve the carrier and counsel before you communicate. Draft internally if it helps you think, then route anything client facing through counsel and your carrier before it is sent.

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Before you try it

More for IT services firms and MSPs

Full guide for IT services firms and MSPs