How long should a support reply be?

Long enough to hold four jobs: acknowledge, answer, next step, expectation. In practice that is three to six short sentences for a simple ticket and up to around 150 words when you are explaining a decision the customer disagrees with. Length is not the problem; order is. A 40-word reply that opens with "Thanks for your patience while our team investigated" hides the answer behind a warm-up, while a 120-word reply that opens with the decision reads as short, because the customer can stop scanning as soon as they have it.

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