complaint-answer

---
name: complaint-answer
description: Reads an angry customer's complaint, separates the facts from the feeling, works out what is actually owed, and hands back a reply to send and a fix to make, with every money figure left blank.
---

# Turn an angry customer into one who comes back

You paste in the complaint. You get back three things: what actually happened as against what they felt, a reply written for you to approve with every amount left blank, and the one change that stops it happening again.

## What it does

1. **Read the complaint twice and split it into two columns before writing anything.** Column one is fact: dates, amounts, order numbers, names, what was promised, what arrived. Column two is feeling: the harm claimed, the tone, what they say it cost them. Answer column one with records. Never argue with column two, and never write "I understand your frustration" as a substitute for answering column one.
2. **Name the type of anger and the root cause in one line each, before drafting.** The composio-community angry-customer-playbook skill sorts anger into frustrated (legitimate issue, losing patience), hostile (personal attacks, profanity, threats), passive-aggressive (sarcasm, backhanded comments) and desperate (urgency mixed with helplessness), and the cause into product failure, unmet expectations, communication failure, financial impact, or a repeated issue. The reply changes completely between them: a repeated issue that has already had two apologies must not receive a third.
3. **Check every checkable claim against the owner's own records, and mark what could not be checked inside the draft rather than guessing at it.** Anthropic's ticket-deflector skill is blunt about this: never fabricate order details, and if there is no record, say so inline in the draft rather than inventing a status. Use a bracketed note the owner will see and delete, for example *[Note: no record of the 14 August delivery, confirm before sending]*.
4. **Work out what is owed by law first, and keep it separate from anything offered as goodwill.** For goods sold to a consumer in the UK, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives a short-term right to reject within 30 days of delivery (section 22). For services, the customer can require the work to be done again at the trader's cost, within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience (section 55), and where that is impossible or fails, a price reduction, with any refund paid within 14 days of the trader agreeing to it (section 56). Write the owed part as a fact and the goodwill part as an offer. They are not the same conversation and merging them costs the owner money.
5. **Leave every figure blank. Always.** Write [AMOUNT] or [£____] and never a number, a percentage, a free month or a replacement, even when the amount looks obvious from the order value. The owner fills it in. This is also what the evidence supports: Wirtz and Mattila found that compensation "may not enhance satisfaction when the recovery process is well-executed", that it "failed to lessen dissatisfaction with a poor recovery process", and that it "is a poor substitute for a good recovery process". Money is the last lever, not the first.
6. **Build the reply in four moves, in this order: validate, own it, solve it, prevent it.** That is the structure the angry-customer-playbook uses, and each move must be specific to this customer: validate what happened to them rather than complaints in general, own it without shifting blame to a courier, a supplier or a member of staff, solve it with a named action and a date, and say what changes so it does not recur. Answer every separate point they raised, in the order they raised them, and count them to be sure.
7. **Reply fast and say when the next update lands.** Speed is the cheapest thing on this list and the one the customer notices. ISO 10002:2018, the international guideline for complaints handling in organisations, lists responsiveness, timeliness and transparency among its guiding principles, and requires that "individual complainants should be provided with adequate information about the handling of their complaint". Acknowledge the same working day even if the answer is not ready, and give a date rather than "shortly" or "as soon as possible".
8. **Write the internal fix as a separate block that never touches the customer reply.** One sentence on what actually went wrong, one named change, whose job it is, and by when. Anthropic's handle-complaint skill asks whether this matches a known theme and says either "this is the Nth complaint about this issue this month" or "this looks like a one-off, no pattern detected". Do that, and if it is the second or later of the same kind, say so plainly, because a repeat is a process problem and not a customer problem.
9. **Hand back the three blocks and stop. Send nothing.** The fact and feeling split, the reply draft with its blanks and bracketed notes, and the internal fix. Then ask one question: send as written, edit, or handle differently. Anthropic's handle-complaint skill sets the same gates: never send a response without explicit owner approval, never issue refunds or credits automatically, never close a ticket or a dispute without confirmation.

## Then it checks

1. Every separate point in the customer's most recent message has an answer in the draft. Count the points, count the answers, and say both numbers.
2. No money figure appears anywhere in the draft. Every one is a blank for the owner to fill, and no wording implies an amount by describing it instead.
3. Nothing in the draft is asserted that was not found in a record. Anything unverified appears as a bracketed note, not as a statement of fact.
4. The draft names an action and a calendar date. "We will look into this" does not pass.
5. No part of the internal fix appears in the customer reply: no staff name, no blame, no description of an internal failing the owner has not chosen to disclose.
6. The draft does not admit legal liability, and any sentence about the customer's legal rights is flagged for the owner to confirm before sending.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Never promise, name, hint at or calculate a refund, credit, discount, replacement or compensation the owner has not authorised. Every figure stays as a blank, even when the customer has already demanded a specific sum.
- Never send, post or reply anywhere. This produces a draft for the owner to approve, and nothing leaves until they say so.
- This is not legal advice. The statutory rights above are pointers so the owner knows roughly where they stand, and anything that turns on them is for the owner or their solicitor to confirm before the reply goes out.
- Stop and tell the owner to take professional advice before replying if the complaint involves injury or illness, a child, a data or privacy breach, discrimination, a food safety or fire safety issue, a threat of court action, or a regulator. These carry reporting deadlines and admissions that cannot be withdrawn, and a fast friendly reply is the wrong move.

## Built from
- anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins, small-business plugin, handle-complaint and ticket-deflector skills, https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/blob/main/small-business/skills/handle-complaint/SKILL.md, 23,911 stars read from api.github.com: the three approval gates in step 9, the "Nth complaint about this issue this month" pattern check in step 8, and ticket-deflector's rule never to fabricate an order detail and to flag data gaps inline with a bracketed note.
- composio-community/support-skills, angry-customer-playbook and draft-reply skills, https://github.com/composio-community/support-skills/blob/main/angry-customer-playbook/SKILL.md, 19 stars read from api.github.com: the four-way anger classification and five root causes in step 2, and the validate, own it, solve it, prevent it response structure in step 6, including its instruction that each part be specific to this customer rather than generic.
- Wirtz, J. and Mattila, A.S., "Consumer responses to compensation, speed of recovery and apology after a service failure", International Journal of Service Industry Management, volume 15, issue 2, pages 150 to 166, 2004, https://www.emerald.com/josm/article/15/2/150/153805/Consumer-responses-to-compensation-speed-of: the finding that compensation adds little when the recovery process is already immediate and includes an apology, and none at all when the process is poor, which is why this skill puts speed and specificity ahead of money and leaves every figure blank.
- ISO 10002:2018, "Quality management. Customer satisfaction. Guidelines for complaints handling in organizations", third edition, July 2018, preview read at https://cdn.standards.iteh.ai/samples/71580/7f69224e30304ee5922a3563fe707eb1/ISO-10002-2018.pdf: the guiding principles in clause 4, including transparency, accessibility, responsiveness, objectivity, accountability and timeliness, clause 4.4's requirement that "individual complainants should be provided with adequate information about the handling of their complaint", and clause 4.15 in full, "complaints should be handled as expeditiously as feasible given the nature of the complaint and of the process used", which together become the same-day acknowledgement and the named date in step 7.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, sections 22, 55 and 56, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/55: the 30 day short-term right to reject goods, the right to require a service to be performed again at the trader's cost, the price reduction remedy, and the 14 day deadline for paying a refund once the trader agrees one is due.

Sources for complaint-answer

Every source below was opened and read on 7 September 2026. Where a source does not support what the

skill says it supports, that is stated plainly rather than smoothed over.

anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins, small-business plugin, handle-complaint and ticket-deflector

Anthropic's own public plugin collection for small business work, read today at

https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/blob/main/small-business/skills/handle-complaint/SKILL.md

and at the sibling path for ticket-deflector. https://api.github.com/repos/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins returns **23,911 stars**

today. Both files load and both say what the skill claims. handle-complaint is a short four step

workflow: load the complaint, pull context, draft a response, suggest an operational fix. Its

"Approval gates" section reads, word for word, "Never send a response without explicit owner

approval", "Never issue refunds or credits automatically" and "Never close tickets or resolve disputes

without owner confirmation", and those three lines are what step 9 of this skill turns into a hard

stop before anything is sent. Its Step 4 is the pattern check: if the complaint matches a known theme

it says "This is the {Nth} complaint about {issue} this month", and if not, "This looks like a one-off.

No pattern detected". That is exactly the wording step 8 borrows for the internal fix block, and it is

why this skill insists on saying which of the two it is rather than staying silent. Its closing line

also asks the owner "Want to send this response, edit it, or handle it differently?", which is the

single question step 9 ends on. ticket-deflector supplies the honesty rule: its own approval gates end

with "Never fabricate order details. If PayPal has no record, say so inline in the draft, do not

invent a status", and its step 4 tells the drafter to "Flag any data gaps inline in the draft with a

bracketed note" and gives the example *[Note: No PayPal transaction found, verify order ID before

sending]*. Step 3 of this skill copies that mechanism directly, including the bracketed note the owner

will see and delete. One difference worth knowing: both Anthropic skills assume connected tools such

as PayPal, HubSpot and Gmail, and this skill assumes nothing at all beyond the owner's own records, so

the lookup steps were dropped and only the judgement and the gates were kept.

composio-community/support-skills, angry-customer-playbook and draft-reply

A public collection of customer support skills, read today at

https://github.com/composio-community/support-skills. The page loads, and

https://api.github.com/repos/composio-community/support-skills returns **19 stars**. It holds roughly forty skills, and the two named here are both present, though on the

default branch they sit at the top level rather than inside a `skills/` folder, so the file

read was `angry-customer-playbook/SKILL.md`. angry-customer-playbook is a de-escalation guide, and its

Analysis section is the origin of step 2 of this skill. Its anger classification is four entries long

and reads: Frustrated (legitimate issue, losing patience), Hostile (personal attacks, profanity,

threats), Passive-aggressive (sarcasm, backhanded comments), Desperate (urgency mixed with

helplessness). Its root cause list is five entries: product failure, unmet expectations, communication

failure, financial impact, repeated issue. Both lists are reproduced in step 2 without change. Its

"Recommended Response Structure" is the four move sequence in step 6, numbered in the same order, and

the file annotates each move exactly as this skill does: Validate is "specific acknowledgment of THEIR

situation, not generic", Own it is "take responsibility without blame-shifting", Solve it is "concrete

action with timeline" and Prevent it is "what you'll do so this doesn't happen again". The playbook

also carries a "Do NOT" section whose worked example is "Don't use 'I understand' if they've heard it

3 times already", which is where step 1's ban on using "I understand your frustration" as a substitute

for an answer, and step 2's warning about a third apology on a repeated issue, both come from. The

second named skill, draft-reply, is a Gorgias and Gmail drafting workflow, and one line of it is load

bearing here: its drafting principles say to "Address each point/question raised in their latest

message". That is the whole of step 6's closing instruction and of check 1, which counts the points

and the answers and makes the model state both numbers.

Wirtz, J. and Mattila, A.S., 2004, on compensation, speed of recovery and apology

The academic backing for the rule that leaves every money figure blank. The article is "Consumer

responses to compensation, speed of recovery and apology after a service failure", by Jochen Wirtz and

Anna S. Mattila, in the International Journal of Service Industry Management, volume 15, issue 2,

pages 150 to 166, 2004, DOI 10.1108/09564230410532484. The publisher page at

https://www.emerald.com/josm/article/15/2/150/153805/Consumer-responses-to-compensation-speed-of

resists a plain command line fetch behind a bot check, but it opens normally in a browser fetch, and

the citation and abstract read there today match the skill's claims word for word. The abstract states

that compensation "may not enhance satisfaction when the recovery process is well-executed (an

immediate response combined with an apology)" and that "compensation failed to lessen dissatisfaction

with a poor recovery process (a delayed response without apology)". It adds that compensation helped

only in mixed cases, meaning a delayed recovery with an apology, or an immediate recovery without one.

That is the entire argument behind step 5: money is the last lever rather than the first, so the model

never proposes an amount and the owner decides. One caution the skill itself observes: only the

abstract is public, the full paper sits behind Emerald's paywall, so the quoted sentences are the

findings as the publisher states them and not a reading of the underlying data. The skill quotes them

as quotations, which is the right level of confidence.

ISO 10002:2018, guidelines for complaints handling in organizations

The international guideline for how an organisation should handle complaints. The official preview

PDF at

https://cdn.standards.iteh.ai/samples/71580/7f69224e30304ee5922a3563fe707eb1/ISO-10002-2018.pdf

downloads cleanly, is 13 pages, and its cover confirms the title "Quality management, Customer

satisfaction, Guidelines for complaints handling in organizations", third edition, dated 2018-07. Its

Clause 4, "Guiding principles", is fully inside the preview and lists, in order, Commitment, Capacity,

Transparency, Accessibility, Responsiveness, Objectivity, Charges, Information integrity,

Confidentiality, Customer-focused approach, Accountability, Improvement, Competence and Timeliness. So

every principle the skill names is really there. Clause 4.4, Transparency, contains the sentence the

skill quotes: "Individual complainants should be provided with adequate information about the handling

of their complaint." Clause 4.15, Timeliness, reads in full "Complaints should be handled as

expeditiously as feasible given the nature of the complaint and of the process used." Together those

two lines are the whole justification for step 7: tell the customer where their complaint has got to,

and do it quickly. **One thing the preview does not support:** the standard's own acknowledgement

clause is 7.4, and the preview stops partway through Clause 5, so the body of 7.4 could not be read.

The skill's rule to acknowledge the same working day and to give a calendar date rather than "shortly"

is therefore this skill's own practical reading of responsiveness, timeliness and transparency, and

not a figure quoted from ISO 10002. Nothing in the skill claims otherwise, and check 4 tests the

behaviour rather than the standard.

Consumer Rights Act 2015, sections 22, 55 and 56

The statutory floor under step 4, so that what the law already owes the customer is never confused

with what the owner chooses to give. All three sections were read today on the official legislation

site, at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/55 and the sibling URLs for sections 22

and 56, and every figure in the skill is correct. Section 22 sets the time limit on the short-term

right to reject goods: the end of 30 days beginning with the first day after ownership has passed, the

goods have been delivered, and any installation the trader had to do has been notified as done, with a

shorter period for goods that can reasonably be expected to perish sooner. Section 55 is the right to

require repeat performance of a service, and subsection 2 says the trader "must provide it within a

reasonable time and without significant inconvenience to the consumer" and "must bear any necessary

costs incurred in doing so", while subsection 3 removes the right where completing the service in

conformity with the contract is impossible. Section 56 is the price reduction that follows when repeat

performance is impossible or the trader has failed to do it properly, and its subsection 4 is the 14

day rule the skill quotes: a refund "must be given without undue delay, and in any event within 14

days beginning with the day on which the trader agrees that the consumer is entitled to a refund".

Section 56 also forbids charging a fee on the refund and requires the same payment method be used,

which are two more facts the owner may want and which the skill deliberately leaves out to stay short.

The skill's Rules section is right to say this is not legal advice, and right to stop entirely on

injury, children, data breaches, discrimination, safety and threatened court action, because none of

those are settled by these three sections.

Best public prompt we found for this job

**composio-community/support-skills, the angry-customer-playbook skill,

https://github.com/composio-community/support-skills**. Of everything read, it is the only public

artefact that does the hard part, which is deciding what kind of anger this is before deciding what to

write, and it is short enough for a small business owner to read in one go. The one line worth copying

verbatim, from its "Do NOT" section, is:

Don't use "I understand" if they've heard it 3 times already.

That single sentence kills the commonest failure in complaint replies, which is a warm opening that

answers nothing, and it is the reason this skill splits fact from feeling in step 1 before a word of

the reply gets written.