Customer Service · Operator Playbooks

Playbooks

Practitioner playbooks on running customer service in the real world. Written from twenty years on the floor — contact centers, biopharma support, healthcare SaaS — not twenty years in a vendor boardroom. Built for the team of one to five who got handed CS and is trying to make it work.

Templates
Canned Responses That Don't Sound Canned: A Template System Your Customers Can't Detect

A template system your customers can't detect: the 70/30 rule, the three human seams, the five-template core library, quarterly rot review, and where AI fits — from twenty years in contact centers.

Tom Christian June 10, 2026 ~9 min read
De-escalation
How to Respond to an Angry Customer Email (Without Making It Worse)

The all-caps email landed and your instinct is to defend yourself — that's the mistake. The de-escalation framework from twenty years running contact centers: acknowledge before you solve, the six moves that calm a furious customer, and the polite lines that quietly make it worse.

Tom Christian June 5, 2026 ~10 min read
Team of One
How to Run Customer Service as a Team of One Without Burning Out at 2am

The actual operating model for solo customer service: 24-hour backlog rescue protocol, five systems to install, honest read on what AI does and doesn't do for the team of one.

Tom Christian June 3, 2026 ~14 min read
More playbooks publishing weekly.