Customer Email Sprint

# Customer Email Sprint — Prompt

Paste the prompt below into Claude (or any capable AI chat). Replace the bracketed parts with your actual emails and context, and send it. You'll get back a clean set of drafts you can review, edit, and send.

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You are helping me run an email sprint for my small business. I'm going to paste up to ten customer messages below. For each one, I'll give you a single line of context about the sender and the situation. Your job is to draft a short, warm, professional reply in my voice that I can edit and send.

## My voice

- Direct but warm. I write like a real person, not a corporate help desk.
- I use contractions. I use the customer's first name. I don't say "we" unless I'm speaking for a team I actually have.
- I never start with "Thank you for reaching out." I start with whatever the email is actually about.
- I never use phrases like "at this time," "we appreciate your patience," "please don't hesitate to," or "rest assured."
- If I'm apologizing, I apologize once, specifically, and then I say what I'm doing about it.
- If I'm saying no, I say no clearly, once, with the reason, and then I offer whatever I can offer instead.
- I sign off with just my first name.

[If your voice is different from the above, replace this section with three sentences describing your tone. Example: "I'm more formal than this. I use full names, no contractions, and I always open with a greeting."]

## My business context

- Business: [one line — what you sell and who you sell to]
- Typical customer: [one line — are they first-time buyers, repeat clients, local, etc.]
- Refund policy in plain words: [one line — e.g., "30 days, no questions, customer pays return shipping"]
- Things I can offer when someone is unhappy: [e.g., "partial refund, replacement, store credit, or a written apology"]
- Things I can't do: [e.g., "expedited shipping, custom orders under $50, warranty past 90 days"]

## How I want the output formatted

Organize the replies into three groups, in this order:

1. **Urgent** — anything with a deadline, an angry customer, a payment issue, or a legal-sounding phrase. Flag with a one-line note at the top of each reply explaining why it's urgent.
2. **Standard** — regular questions, order status, product questions, polite complaints.
3. **Low priority** — newsletter replies, thank-you notes, vague messages that don't really ask anything.

For each email, show me:

- The customer's name and a three-word summary of what they want
- The draft reply, formatted as an actual email I could paste into my send box
- If you are uncertain about anything, a single line at the bottom labeled "CHECK:" with the specific question you want me to answer before sending

If an email is asking something you cannot safely answer — a legal question, a specific refund amount I haven't authorized, a claim about a product defect I haven't confirmed — do not guess. Write "NEEDS MY INPUT:" at the top of that reply and list what you need from me before drafting anything.

## The emails

Here are the messages, with my one-line context for each:

**Email 1**
Context: [one line, e.g., "Linda is a repeat customer, ordered the large tote, it shipped 8 days ago"]
Message: [paste the email here]

**Email 2**
Context: [one line]
Message: [paste the email here]

[Repeat for up to 10 emails. You can paste fewer — the sprint works with three just as well as ten.]

---

## How to use this prompt

1. Open a blank chat with Claude.
2. Paste the entire prompt above, starting from "You are helping me..."
3. Fill in the My voice, My business context, and The emails sections. The more specific the context, the better the drafts.
4. Send it. You'll get back a structured set of drafts in about 30 seconds.
5. Read every draft. Edit the ones that need editing. Answer the CHECK questions. Send.

## What to expect

The first time you run this, the drafts will feel about 80% right. The parts that are off are almost always in the voice section — the AI doesn't know you yet, and your voice on the page is more specific than you think. After one pass, update the My voice section with two or three corrections ("I never say 'hope this helps'," "I always end with 'Talk soon,'"), and the next run will be noticeably closer.

After three runs, you'll have a tuned version of this prompt that matches your voice well enough that the Monday morning email sprint takes fifteen minutes instead of ninety.

## What this prompt will not do

It will not send anything. It will not mark things read. It will not remember past conversations with a specific customer unless you tell it the history in the context line. It will not make a judgment call on a refund you haven't decided on yet. If you need those things, you need a real help-desk tool, not a chat prompt.

What it will do is unstick your first sentence, ten times in a row, so you can actually clear the backlog and get back to the work you're being paid for.