Every once in a while you’ll have a situation where a customer reaches out angry about something that’s in your product that, upon deeper digging from you, actually isn’t your fault. How do you tell the customer that what they’re so frustrated by is on them? This can be super tricky, especially if they already appear to be angry and agitated with your brand. Here’s one template that you might be able to modify to work for your needs:

Hey there,

Thanks so much for emailing and for level detail you used in explaining your case. It was super helpful in terms of pinning down what was causing this issue. As I dug a bit deeper, I uncovered the situation was actually due to your [explain what was going on] not being set properly. If you go in and shift the [setting] from [a] to [b], it should work as expected.

Could you let me know if that helps?

The important thing to note is that you didn’t say that it was the customer’s fault or that they had done anything wrong. Instead of saying something like “It looks like you clicked on the wrong button. If you just unclick that, you should be good to go!” say “I went and took a look, and it seems like the [x] button is checked. Would you mind trying to unclick that button and see if the issue is resolved?”

This takes the ownership out of the customer’s hands and into your product’s, thus helping to reduce the chances of them being aggravated or feeling frustrated by being accused of doing something incorrectly. That being said, it also teaches them how to do the thing that was giving them grief. While you could just as easily go about changing something for your customers, you do them more of a service if you teach them how to do it. That way, they don’t have to reach out to you every time, and they feel empowered the next time they run into trouble.