The 18 messages behind the six conversations that are actually hard to word: telling somebody their order is late, asking for money, chasing a quote. Copy one, change the parts in brackets, send it.
Every message has three versions, because a client who signs off invoices and a customer you see every week want different sentences. Under each set is the reason those particular words work, which is the part worth reading if you would rather write your own.
Something you promised will not arrive when you said it would, and the customer does not know yet.
Why these work. The message that saves the relationship is the one that arrives before the customer asks. After they ask, the same words are an excuse. Give a specific new date rather than "as soon as possible", because a vague promise makes them chase you again in two days and now they are annoyed twice. Apologise once. A message that apologises three times reads as though something worse is being held back, and it invites the reader to go looking for it.
An invoice has passed its due date and you have heard nothing.
Why these work. Three things make a chase get paid instead of ignored. Give them a way to say "it is already paid" without embarrassment, because often it is, and a message that assumes otherwise damages a good customer over an accounting lag. Repeat the payment details inside the message, so nobody has to scroll back through four months of chat to find them. And offer a conversation about timing. Most late payment in a small business is cash flow rather than refusal, and the person avoiding you is avoiding the conversation, not the bill.
You sent a price and heard nothing back.
Why these work. Giving the reader permission to say no is what gets a reply. "Should I close it off" is answered far more often than "just checking in", because the second one asks for a decision and the first one asks for a single word. Silence after a quote is usually a person who has not decided, and what they are avoiding is the awkwardness of telling you. Remove the awkwardness and you get an answer, including the no, which is worth having: a no you know about stops costing you follow-ups. This is the version for a price already sent. For an enquiry that went quiet before any quote, there is a two-step sequence in the Lead Leak Checklist.
Somebody has just messaged you for the first time.
Why these work. Answer something before you ask something. A first reply that only requests information reads as a form, and a good share of them never get a second message. Answering even partially, in the first line, tells the sender they have reached a person who knows the answer. Ask one question rather than five. Five questions in a first reply is homework, and homework arrives at somebody who has messaged three businesses and is waiting to see which one is easiest to deal with.
The work is finished and the customer is happy.
Why these work. The last line is the one that matters. Offering to hear the complaint privately is the honest thing to do, and it also routes an unhappy customer to your phone rather than to a public star rating you cannot edit. Ask once, on the day the work finished, while the person still remembers being pleased. Asking twice converts almost nobody and costs you the goodwill you were trading on. Send the link itself, not "search for us on Google": every extra step between the request and the review loses people.
They have said yes and the work has not begun.
Why these work. This message sets the response time for the entire relationship, whatever you intended. Say when you are reachable and people will mostly respect it. Say nothing and they will assume always, then feel let down at nine on a Sunday for a reason nobody ever agreed. Name one thing you need from them rather than a list, and name it in the first message: the thing you do not ask for now is the thing you will spend next week chasing.
Send it from a WhatsApp Business account rather than a personal one. The customer sees a business name and a category instead of a number they do not recognise, and you get away messages and quick replies without paying for anything. Setting it up takes about ten minutes and it is covered step by step in our guide to WhatsApp Business.
Then decide who owns the inbox. Most of the damage these messages are written to prevent is not caused by bad wording. It is caused by nobody being sure whose job it was to reply, which is a question no template can answer for you.
A box that takes your situation in your own words and writes the message back would be the better product, and it needs a language model behind it. We are not running one on this site, and a page that accepted free text and returned one of eighteen fixed answers would be pretending to be something it is not. So this is the honest version: messages somebody wrote, with the reasoning printed underneath.
Nothing on this page is sent anywhere. There is no form, no email field and no record of which message you copied against you. If we do build the generated version, that page will say plainly where the model is used and what leaves your browser.
A website that brings in no enquiries. A business nobody finds on Google. The same job done by hand every week. Tell us which one it is.
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