Stop 4 of 8 · Daily
Complaints and reviews
A reply you can send as is, with a fix, a date, and no cause anybody invented.
The complaint that lands at 4:40
An office manager writes to Nadia that the curing light arrived cracked, the patient it was for is booked Thursday, and this is the second problem this quarter. You are in the warehouse, it is nearly five, and whatever you send in the next ten minutes decides whether this is an incident or an account you lose.
The reply is not hard to write. It is hard to write calmly, twice a week, in your own voice, without either grovelling or getting defensive. That is the part to hand over.
The reply rule
Four sentences. Apologize once, for the thing that happened and nothing broader. State only facts you have checked. Say exactly what happens next and by when. Offer a call. No second apology, no explanation of your packing process, no promise about never again.
The trap is the cause. Claude does not know why the box was crushed and will write a reason anyway because reasons read better. Every invented cause is a sentence a customer can quote back at you, or a carrier can use to close your claim.
Reviews are a different job
A complaint is a conversation with one office. A review is a note to every practice manager who searches for you next month. So the review reply is short, names the one thing they raised, says what changed, and gives a direct way to reach you. Sixty words. No defence, no history of the order, no invitation to keep arguing where everyone can watch.
Try this
[paste the complaint email] Draft a reply in four sentences: apologize once, say what we are doing and by when, and offer a call. Use only facts that appear in this email or that I give you. Anything you would have to assume, put in square brackets and list at the end. Do not name a cause for the problem and do not promise it will not happen again.
[paste the review] Write a reply of no more than sixty words for a public review page. Thank them, name the specific thing they mentioned, say what we changed because of it, and give a way to reach me directly. Do not mention any practice or patient name they did not use themselves. Plain and short, no marketing lines.
Here is the complaint and the draft reply. Tell me whether this should be a phone call instead of an email, and why. Treat anything involving a refund, a delivery that affected a patient appointment, or a customer who has complained before as a call, and tell me the first two sentences to open it with.