Honestly, I don't need well-drafted prose or a happy email to alert me of a server outage. I could care less. They should have a pre-drafted document that let's them fill in blanks based on the problem at hand. I was one of these affected customers and can say that not being notified of the servers being down cost me a few hours of uptime. I would say that customer communication during chaos is nearly as important as fixing the problem itself. Just my two cents.