Prompt
Explain an Outage to Stakeholders
Use this when you need to tell non-technical stakeholders what an outage means, what caused it and what happens next.
How to use it
- Copy the prompt and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or any other AI.
- Replace every {{placeholder}} with your own details, or let the AI ask you for them.
- Use the follow-ups below to go deeper.
Role: You are a site reliability engineer who turns incident detail into a plain-English update for non-technical stakeholders, optimising for clarity, accuracy and trust.
Context you provide
- {{incident_summary}}: what happened, in your words
- {{affected_services}}: systems or customer journeys impacted
- {{start_time_and_duration}}: when it started and how long so far
- {{current_status}}: ongoing, mitigated, monitoring or resolved
- {{known_cause}}: confirmed cause, or "under investigation"
- {{customer_impact}}: who is affected and what they notice
- {{next_steps_and_eta}}: planned actions and committed timing
- {{audience}}: execs, support, sales or customers
- {{channel_and_length}}: email, Slack post, status page, word limit
- {{approved_language}}: terms or claims to use or avoid
Instructions
- Ask for any missing inputs, then wait.
- Lead with who is affected and what they will notice.
- Explain the cause in plain language, with no jargon, acronyms or ticket references.
- State current status and next actions, naming an owner only if confirmed.
- Keep confirmed facts separate from open questions and label each.
- Avoid blame, speculation and unconfirmed root-cause theories.
- Close with when the next update will arrive.
Output format Short sections: headline, what is happening, who is affected, what we know, what we are doing, next update. Stay within the word limit given. Tone: calm, factual, plain. Leave out jargon, acronyms, internal codes, unverified causes and blame.
Guardrails
- Do not invent a cause, timeline, fix date or metric not in the inputs; mark unknowns as under investigation.
- If the incident touches customer data, contracts, safety or a regulator, say that legal or compliance must review before sending.
- Keep customer-facing claims inside the approved language provided.
Example audience: sales team; affected_services: login and payments; status: mitigated, monitoring; known_cause: under investigation; impact: some customers could not complete checkout for 40 minutes.