A one-page style card for replies that are different every time

Some messages arrive in a new shape every time: the customer upset about something you got wrong, the parent who writes four paragraphs before the question, the supplier asking why an invoice was paid late, the colleague who wants an exception to a rule you didn’t write. Each needs a careful answer in your team’s voice, which is exactly what you don’t have time for at 4:45 on a Thursday.

If you answer messages like these at a support desk, a front desk or a public counter, or in sales, HR or accounts payable, the fix is one page, written once, that tells an AI assistant how your team replies and which facts it may use. Paste it in with each message and edit what comes back. By the end of today you’ll have your team’s style card saved and three drafts, written with it, that you’d sign.

Where templates stop

A template works when the reply is the same every time, like the opening hours or the note confirming that a form arrived. Five email templates built from your sent folder covers those, and once they’re saved you insert them in a few clicks with no assistant involved. If one “odd” question turns up every week, it stopped being odd a while ago: answer it once on an FAQ page. And if you can answer in two lines, just answer.

What’s left are the messages where the facts and the voice stay the same and only the situation changes. A template can’t bend to the situation, and a blank chat bends too far: ask an assistant to “reply politely to this customer” and it may invent a refund window and apologize twice in four lines, in a voice like no one on your team. The card pins down what stays the same, so the assistant only works on the part that changes.

The card

Here is an example, filled in for a made-up language school. Keep the headings and replace the rest.

HOW WE REPLY
(Example: a made-up language school. Replace every line with your own.)

WHO WE ARE
A language school with eight teachers and evening and Saturday classes. Most messages come from adult students and from parents of teenagers.

HOW WE SOUND
Warm and plain, the way the front desk talks on a good day. First names and short sentences. Apologize once, and only when we got something wrong, then say what happens next. Under 150 words unless the message asks several questions.

FACTS AND POLICIES YOU MAY USE
- When the school cancels a class, it is made up within 30 days. The student picks a slot from the make-up calendar.
- If no make-up slot works, the class is credited against next term's fee.
- Term fees are refunded only within 14 days of the term's first class.
- Front desk: Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

NEVER PROMISE
- Refunds or discounts outside the policies above.
- A particular teacher or time slot.
- Any date that isn't in this card or in the message.
- That it "won't happen again".

PHRASES WE AVOID
"As per our policy", "We apologize for any inconvenience", "Please be advised", "Unfortunately" as the first word.

SIGN-OFF
"Best," then the first name of the person replying, then "Front desk" and our phone number.

The facts section does most of the work. Copy your rules word for word from wherever they’re written down, numbers included, and the assistant has far fewer gaps to fill with invented ones. In sales it might hold the price list and who approves a discount; in HR, the leave rules and who approves exceptions; in accounts payable, the payment terms and the day of the week payments go out; at a public counter, the documents each procedure needs and how long it takes. “Never promise” holds what anyone would quote back to you once it’s in writing.

You don’t have to describe your voice from nothing. Start a new conversation, paste this, and add five replies your team was happy with, names and details removed:

Below are five replies our team was happy with. In five lines, describe the tone, length and phrasing they share. Then list any phrases that appear in more than one of them.

[paste the five replies here]

Put the lines you recognize as true under “How we sound” and drop the rest.

The prompt

Start a new conversation and paste the card, then this prompt with the message at the end, all in one go.

Above is our style card. Draft a reply to the message below, following the card's tone, length and sign-off.

- Use only facts from the card or from the message. If the reply needs a fact the card doesn't have, write [MISSING: what's needed] instead of supplying it.
- Wherever a person has to choose (a refund, an exception, a date, a discount), write [DECIDE: the choice, and what the card allows] instead of choosing.

After the draft, under the heading "Not from the card", list every fact, number, date or promise in the draft that comes from neither the card nor the message. Write "None" if there are none.

The message:
[paste it here, with names and account details replaced]

Before you paste a real message, replace names, email addresses and account or order numbers with placeholders such as [PARENT] or [ORDER]; Before you upload a client document covers what to check about the tool itself.

A worked example

We made up this message and wrote the draft to show the shape of what comes back; your assistant’s wording will differ.

This is the second Thursday class you’ve canceled this month. My daughter is supposed to have eight classes a month and she’s getting six. She has her exam in June and she’s already behind. I’d like to know what you’re going to do about it, because right now I’m thinking about asking for the term’s money back.

Hello [PARENT],

You're right that we canceled two of [STUDENT]'s Thursday classes this month, and I'm sorry. Both will be made up within 30 days, at times she picks from our make-up calendar. If no slot works, we'll credit the class against next term's fee.

I've also asked her teacher to send you a note on how she's doing before the June exam.

[DECIDE: refund of the term fee. The card allows refunds only within 14 days of the term's first class; anything else is an exception.]

Best,
[NAME]
Front desk, [PHONE]

Not from the card:
- A note from her teacher before the June exam.

A reasonable start, and it still needs three edits:

1. Check the sender’s version. The draft agrees that two classes were canceled because the message says so. Your calendar may show one, plus one the student missed.
2. Make the decision. Hold to the refund rule and point to the make-up classes and the credit, or make an exception if it’s yours to make. A plain sentence replaces the marker.
3. Turn the flagged promise into a real one, or cut it. The exam is the parent’s real worry, but the assistant had no business promising anything for the teacher. Ask the teacher, then write the line with a real day: “Her teacher will email you by Friday with where she stands and what to practice before June.”

What the assistant gets wrong, and a check before you send

Where the card has no fact, the assistant may supply a plausible one, such as a 30-day refund window, stated as confidently as the facts you gave it, and it doesn’t always put it on the list. Drafts also tend to apologize more than once and to run long, and an upset reader reads less. Check four things before you send:

1. Every fact and number appears in the card or in your own records. When one doesn’t, delete it, and if the real answer exists, add it to the card so the next draft has it.
2. No [DECIDE] or [MISSING] marker is left, and each decision is one you’re allowed to make.
3. There is one specific apology at most, such as “we canceled two classes, and that’s on us”.
4. It fits the card’s length, and you’d say it this way across the counter or on the phone.

Try it today

Set aside 45 minutes. Fill in the six parts of the card for your own team, copying your policies word for word from wherever they live now. Then pick three messages of the kind that eat your afternoons: one waiting in your inbox right now if there is one, and the ones from last month that took longest to answer (or made-up messages of the same kind). Replace the names and account details, run each through the prompt and edit each draft until you’d sign it.

You’re done when the card is saved where you’ll find it tomorrow and you have three drafts you’d sign. If one of them answers a message that’s still waiting, send it. Whatever you had to add by hand to all three drafts belongs in the card, so add it now. To see what the card is worth to you, time the third reply from paste to finished edit and compare it with how long a message like that usually takes you.

Pasting the card every time gets old by the second day. Set up your AI assistant once shows how to give your replies their own project with the card as a reference file, so every conversation there starts with the card on hand, no pasting needed. Save the prompt with your others in one place. And for the message only you can write, the one that has sat in your drafts for a week, go on to The email you’ve been putting off, sent before lunch.