1. Sometimes it's OK to say “NO”

If someone asks you to attend his birthday party and you simply stare back silently, mumbling ”mmm… well, uh…” - you're being a jerk. If you say “No, man, sorry, you know I love you, but I have important plans for the day” instead - you're just being honest.

People like honesty. Just be sure to say “No, because ...”

We have actually wrote a blog-post about saying ""NO"": How to handle feature requests

2. It's OK to say “Sorry” and “I don't know”

Just like saying “no” is better than not responding at all, saying “sorry, we screwed up” is better than denying your mistakes. Don't be afraid to be open about your downtimes, about your bugs and disasters. “We screwed up and are working sleepless nights to recover the database, we know how important your data is!”. Read more here: How to handle downtimes

It's also OK to say “Thank you”, “You're right”, “This sucks”, “Great idea”. It is also OK to use exclamation points, to be excited about the exciting stuff and to be upset about the upsetting things.

3. What it's NOT OK to say:

""Sorry about the inconvenience"" is the worst response you can ever imagine. Oh, no there is one - ""We appreciate your feedback"". You're not AT&T, be personal and empathetic, cut the ""your call is very important to us"" bullshit.

Forget the words: “Feedback”, “Content”, “Appreciate”, “Inconvenience”. Don't say “That/this isn't”, “we don't” and “we won't”. Forget the “enterprisey” clichés, avoid sounding like a robot. You're talking to a real person, so sound like a human being.

Small-businesses sometimes try to sound more 'professional' by using these clichés, but in customer support being small is actually an advantage.