You deleted eight months of her work. There is no backup. Nothing you can offer fixes it, and the call still has to end somewhere.
A support lead at a design collaboration tool. You are calling a customer back after an internal error.
A bulk cleanup job run by your team on Tuesday deleted a workspace belonging to Elena Vasquez, a freelance designer, along with about eight months of client work. Retention had already expired. It is not recoverable. She does not know yet.
Tell her the truth, absorb the reaction, and leave her with the most useful thing available — which is not a refund.
Elena
Freelance designer, self-employed
She opens busy but civil, and she is holding 3 things back — 1 near the surface, 0 that take real questioning, and 2 you will only get to if the conversation genuinely goes well. What they are, and what makes her say them, is the part you have to find. She is not scripted to volunteer any of it.
The objectives for this scenario, and the four axes every support de-escalation call is graded on.
Did they let the customer finish, and reflect back the actual grievance in a way that showed they had understood it — before offering anything?
Did they own it without hiding behind policy, blaming another team, or explaining the internal reason it happened?
Did they stay steady while being shouted at — no defensiveness, no matching the customer's register, no scripted phrases that read as a wall?
Did the customer end the call calmer, with something concrete, and did it stay out of the escalation queue?
The heat came out and the customer left with a concrete commitment.
De-escalated, but nothing concrete agreed.
The fix was offered and never landed, because the anger was never addressed.
They asked for a manager, or hung up. The single most expensive support outcome there is.
Delivering unfixable bad news, and finding the need behind the loss when compensation is not the answer. 12 minutes, live voice, and a scored debrief you can replay. The first call is free.