Start with the customer record.
An office team asks AI to tidy a reply about a repair estimate. The draft sounds helpful. It also turns the customer’s preferred appointment time into a confirmed booking. That is a different decision, hidden inside a better sentence.
Before reviewing the wording, read the latest request, any later changes and the team’s confirmed decisions. Keep that record available while checking the draft. OpenAI notes that generated answers can contain incorrect facts or dates and fabricated references; important information needs verification. Read OpenAI’s guidance on checking answers.
The example below is fictional. It illustrates a review method for routine customer correspondence, not a customer result or a claim that a particular assistant is included in BusinessOS.
Separate the facts from the open decisions.
Suppose a customer requests an estimate to repaint two rooms. The office has accepted responsibility for checking the request. Here is the information the reviewer can actually support.
On a small screen, swipe or scroll sideways to read the full table.
| Detail | Verified information | Still unresolved |
|---|---|---|
| Work requested | The customer asked for an estimate to repaint two rooms. | Final scope and price have not been agreed. |
| Timing | The customer prefers Friday afternoon. | The team has not confirmed availability or an appointment. |
| Responsibility | The office team has accepted the availability and estimate review. | No reply deadline has been promised. |
| Contact | The customer requested email. | No callback was arranged. |
This is a small fact ledger: the source for each statement and the decisions still open. In your own review, identify the relevant message, note or approved policy and when it was checked. Do not paste private customer details into an unapproved tool to create it.
Find the promises hiding in a fluent draft.
Illustrative flawed draft: “You’re booked for Friday afternoon. Your estimate is approved, and our team will finish both rooms in one visit. We’ll call tomorrow to go over everything.”
Every sentence is readable. None of the commitments below is established by this record.
On a small screen, swipe or scroll sideways to read the full table.
| Draft wording | Problem | Required correction |
|---|---|---|
| “You’re booked” | A preference became a confirmed appointment. | Acknowledge the requested time; leave confirmation open. |
| “Your estimate is approved” | The draft invented an approval. | State that the estimate is not yet confirmed. |
| “Finish both rooms in one visit” | The draft promised delivery scope and duration. | Remove it unless an authorized person has agreed it. |
| “We’ll call tomorrow” | The channel conflicts with the request, and the deadline is unsupported. | Use the accepted email next step without inventing a date. |
Also look for quieter commitments: “no problem,” “that’s included,” “we can definitely,” or “you won’t be charged.” Those phrases can imply an answer that the responsible person has not given.
Rewrite only as far as the evidence allows.
Reviewed example: “Thanks for asking about repainting the two rooms. We’ve noted your preference for Friday afternoon. An appointment and estimate have not been confirmed. Our office team will check the request and reply by email about the next step.”
This version preserves the customer’s preference, names the accepted action and makes the uncertainty visible. It does not invent a response deadline or imply that the work is booked. If the office later agrees a realistic reply time, the reviewer can add that verified commitment.
If the next action has no accepted owner, do not fix that by writing “our team will handle it.” Resolve the ownership first. A better message cannot substitute for an operational decision.
Give the drafting task a clear boundary.
An optional instruction for an approved drafting tool:
Use only the verified facts below to draft a short reply. Keep requested times separate from confirmed appointments. Do not add prices, deadlines, guarantees or approvals. List missing decisions separately for the reviewer. Produce a draft only.
Supply an anonymized or fictional example when practicing. Clear instructions can communicate your requirements; they do not guarantee that the output follows them. Review the resulting message against the actual source yourself. Asking the same tool whether its answer is correct is not a substitute for that check.
Use the review sheet before sending.
Download the customer-reply review worksheet (CSV). It is blank, ungated and designed to work in your preferred spreadsheet.
Give each important statement its own row: proposed wording, supporting source, source checked at, unresolved decision, person authorized to decide, and correction. Then record the reviewer’s decision: ready after review, revise, or ask the responsible person. A row marked “unknown” stays unresolved until someone checks it.
Before sending, verify the recipient, the latest customer reply, the agreed contact channel and any stop-contact request. Check dates, names, attachments and links as well as the body text. Keep the completed review in your approved workspace; the worksheet does not need a copy of the whole customer conversation.
After an authorized person sends the message, record what was actually sent and any commitment it created. A reviewed draft is not evidence of delivery. For the next person taking over, preserve the source-checked handoff so they can see the facts, the open decision and who has the next step.