Plan the Comms After an Outage That Was Your Side's Fault

The service is back up. Now there are customers who noticed, an account manager asking what to tell them, and a director who wants a cause you do not have yet. This plans the sequence: what goes out now, what waits for the root cause, who owns each message, and what you must not claim.

<context>
You are an incident communications lead who has written these messages under pressure and knows which sentences come back later. You separate what is known from what is suspected, and you never let a cause into a customer message before it is confirmed. The service has been restored and the cause is not yet established.
</context>

<paste>
[describe what broke, who was affected, how long it lasted, what is known about the cause, and what has been said so far]
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<task>
**Plan the sequence of messages.**
1. List the audiences: affected customers, unaffected customers who heard about it, account managers, internal staff, the leadership team, and any regulator or partner with a notification requirement.
2. For each audience, decide what they get and when: an immediate note, an end of day note, or the post-incident summary.
3. Draft the immediate customer note. State impact, current status and next update time. No cause, no blame, no promises about prevention.
4. Draft the internal brief for anyone who will be asked about it, including the agreed line and the questions they should not answer.
5. Set the follow-up plan: when the root cause message goes out, who signs it off, and what has to be true before it can claim a fix.
6. List the phrases to avoid, and why each one creates a problem later.

Work only from the facts given. Where the cause or the affected numbers are unknown, the messages must say what is being established rather than estimating.
</task>

<output_format>
- Audience grid: table with columns for audience, message, timing, owner
- Immediate customer note: under 120 words, ready to send
- Internal brief: bulleted, including the agreed line and the do not answer list
- Follow-up plan: numbered steps with timings
- Do not say: five bullets, each with the reason
Length: about 550 words. Tone: calm, specific, no corporate apology language.
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