---
name: "service-recovery-and-goodwill"
description: "Use when the company erred — delays, outages, broken promises, botched orders: recover the service, make it right within limit, and resolve in one touch."
triggers: ["service recovery", "make it right for the customer", "botched order", "goodwill credit", "apology note to a customer", "we broke a promise", "recover this case"]
version: "1"
---
# Service recovery and goodwill
Use this when the company erred — delays, outages, broken promises, botched
orders. Recover the service, make it right within the limit, and resolve in
one touch.
## What you need first
The failure record with dates and what was promised, the affected orders or
accounts, the fix with its evidence ID, the goodwill passage and limit, and
past precedent for the same failure.
## Size the failure before you size the remedy
One line: what the customer expected, what happened, and what it cost them —
money, time, a missed event, a customer of their own. A systemic failure
(outage, recall, bad batch) is not a one-off: check whether mass-recovery
comms are already running so you never promise a remedy that contradicts
them.
## Acknowledge, own, offer
Apology first — sincere, specific, no banned phrases — then the failure
named plainly and the fix with its evidence ID, date, and owner. Only then
the remedy. Problem, solution, benefit, in that order, in company voice.
## Make it right inside the limit
Match the remedy to the harm and to precedent: a refund of what was not
delivered, a replacement or redo, a credit or gift, or a fee waived. Small
harm gets a small gesture; a broken promise gets the promise kept plus the
gesture; never a credit as a substitute for the fix. Stay inside the posted
goodwill limit and the remedy the last equivalent case got, and record the
precedent so the next case is consistent. Anything past the limit or
outside precedent goes to the approver with the evidence, framed to the
customer as pending approval.
## Resolve in one touch
The message carries the fix, the remedy, the date, and the owner so the
customer never has to write again. Follow up once after the fix lands, and
close only on the customer's confirmation.
## Output
The recovery note with the cited fix and the goodwill draft, the precedent
line for the log, and the follow-up date. No credits, refunds, or promises
without the owner's yes.
## When the records are thin
No failure record means a narrower apology built on the customer's account
of it, marked UNVERIFIED, with the record that would confirm it. Never
invent a cause, and never promise a remedy you cannot source.