How to make a client welcome packet with ChatGPT or Claude (prompt included)

You signed a new client this week. You already use ChatGPT or Claude for emails and quotes, and the welcome packet is still a blank document, or a two-year-old PDF with last year's prices in it.

This is for people who run the business themselves: a cleaning company with a couple of staff, a home-care agency, a bookkeeper, a coach. Your welcome packet has to say how you work, when you get paid, and what happens when someone cancels. You know all of that already. An AI can turn it into something presentable in a minute. The part that takes care is making sure what it hands back is still your business.

What should I ask the AI to make?

Ask for one HTML file that carries all of its own styling: no separate stylesheet, no images or fonts pulled from the internet, no scripts. Three reasons:

• It reads on a phone. Many clients will open the packet on a phone. A web page reflows to the screen; a PDF page stays A4 and they zoom around it.
• It works wherever you put it. A file that needs nothing outside itself can be emailed, uploaded or opened from a desktop folder and look the same each time. A file that loads a font or a logo from somewhere else can break when that somewhere moves.
• It stays small. Ours came back at 11 KB, which is nothing to upload or send.

If you want the longer version of why this works and how to ask other AI tools for it, the guide to prompting AI for portable HTML covers it in detail.

The prompt

This is the prompt we used, word for word, for a small cleaning business. Copy it, then change the parts listed underneath.

I run a small home-cleaning business (2 cleaners, about 25 regular clients). Make me a client welcome packet as ONE self-contained HTML file: all CSS inline, no external images, fonts or scripts, so it works when I upload it anywhere. Readable on a phone first.

Sections: a short welcome note from me; what's included in a standard clean and what isn't; how booking and rescheduling work (48 hours' notice); payment (invoiced on the 1st, due within 7 days, card or bank transfer); what to do before we arrive (pets, access, valuables); how to reach us and our hours; cancellation and skip-a-week policy; a short FAQ.

Put a "Last updated" date at the top so clients can tell which version they're reading. Use placeholder business name "Brightside Home Cleaning" and placeholder contact details I can swap.

What to change before you paste it:

1. The first sentence. Your trade, how many people, roughly how many clients. It sets the tone of the welcome note.
2. The section list. A bookkeeper might swap "before we arrive" for "what documents I need from you, and by when". A coach might want session length, rescheduling and what happens between sessions. Keep the sections your clients actually ask about.
3. Every term in brackets. Notice period, invoice date, payment window, payment methods. These are the lines clients come back for, so give the AI your real numbers.
4. Anything else you already have a rule for. Late cancellation fee, notice to end service, what you do if you can't get in. If you have a rule, write it in. If you leave it out, the AI may write one for you, which is the next section.
5. The name and contact details. Use your real ones, or leave placeholders and fill them in yourself afterwards. Don't paste client names or addresses into the prompt; the packet is the same for everyone.

We ran this prompt in Claude. Nothing in it is specific to one assistant, so it should work in ChatGPT, Gemini or similar, but we haven't run it there, and each one will lay the page out differently.

What did the AI give back?

A complete, tidy packet. The phone version opened with the "Last updated" line at the top, the business name, and a short contents list linking to each section. The "what's included" part came as two boxes, included and not included, side by side on a computer and stacked on a phone. The FAQ answers were folded away until you tap a question. Bank details had bracketed placeholders like [Bank name] and [000000000] ready to fill in. On a phone-sized screen (390 pixels wide) nothing ran off the side.

It also added things we didn't ask for. The contents list was one. The rest were rules.

Read every rule the AI added

This is the step that matters most, and the easiest to skip because the result looks finished.

Our prompt gave four terms: 48 hours' notice to reschedule, invoiced on the 1st, due within 7 days, card or bank transfer. Here's what else came back.

Written as fact, with nothing to mark it as a guess:

• "If we can't get in at the booked time, we'll call you and wait up to 15 minutes."
• "Tell us within 24 hours and we'll come back to fix it at no charge."
• "Accidents are rare, but if one happens we'll tell you straight away and make it right. We are insured."
• A no-access visit "charged as a late cancellation".
• Inside the oven and fridge, and interior windows, "available as an add-on".
• "Messages answered within one business day."
• Keys "labelled with a code (never your address) and stored securely."
• "We bring all products and equipment."

Put in square brackets as a suggestion:

• A late-cancellation fee of [50%] of the visit price
• Pausing for longer than [4 weeks]
• [two weeks'] notice to end service
• [Saturday by arrangement], next to Monday to Friday hours that weren't in brackets

Every one of these is plausible. That's the problem. A client will read "we'll come back to fix it at no charge" as a promise, and if you don't do free re-cleans you've just offered one. "We are insured" is a claim about your business. If it isn't true, or your cover doesn't include client property, that sentence shouldn't go out.

How to check it:

1. Search the file for [. Each bracket is a guess the AI flagged. Replace it with your number or delete the line.
2. Then read every sentence that contains a number, a time limit, a fee or the word "we'll". For each one ask: did I tell it this? If not, either it's how you really work and it stays, or it gets changed or removed.
3. Read the FAQ answers last, and slowly. That's where our invented promises were. Answers in a friendly voice don't read like policy, but clients will treat them as policy.

You can also ask the AI to list every rule it added that wasn't in your prompt. That's a useful second pass, but it's the same model that wrote them, so still do the reading yourself.

Open it on your phone before anyone else does

Save the file, send it to yourself and open it on your phone. Look for text you have to zoom to read, tables that run off the side, and whether the payment section is easy to find. Checking the page on a real phone goes through what to look for and why a desktop browser shrunk down isn't the same test.

Keep the "Last updated" date honest

The AI wrote that day's date in the "Last updated" line. Don't count on it changing that date on later edits unless you ask. That line is the only way a client can tell whether the packet they're looking at is the current one, so it has to move every time you edit anything.

What happens when my terms change?

Go back to the same chat, or start a new one and paste the file in, and ask for exactly the change:

In this file, change payment from "due within 7 days" to "due within 14 days" everywhere it appears, update the "Last updated" date to today, and change nothing else.

"Change nothing else" is there because you only want one thing to move. Then read the payment section and the date yourself, and skim the rest to make sure nothing else changed.

If the change is about money, deadlines or anything a client agreed to, tell them directly as well: "From 1 March, invoices are due within 14 days. The welcome packet is updated." A packet explains how you work. It isn't the place a client should find out the terms changed.

Getting the packet to your client

Once the file is right, it needs to reach the client in a way they'll find again in month three, and that still opens the current version after you've edited it. Attach it to an email and the copy in their inbox is frozen the day you send it.

A link avoids that. On miinideck you upload the HTML file and get a private link: kept out of search engines, unguessable, and the client doesn't need an account to open it. What's worth knowing before you choose:

• Updating needs an account. With a free account you can replace the file behind the link, and every saved copy of that link opens the new version. Replacing a file you've already sent covers how that works.
• Without an account you can upload up to 3 MB and add a password, but the link expires after 7 days and the file can't be replaced. Fine for a quick test, not for a packet clients keep.
• On a free account links expire after 7 days by default, and one link can stay up permanently. That's the one for a general welcome packet everyone gets. Per-client packets that each need to stay up for months are what the paid plans are for.
• In chat apps, a link to an HTML page usually shows a preview image of the page. A PDF link doesn't, and neither does a link with a password on it.
• You can see how many times it's been opened. Not who opened it, and not how far they read.

If you already run clients through a portal for contracts and invoices, put the packet there instead; one place beats two. If the packet would be the only reason a client has a login, a link is usually enough.