Instructions tell your assistant how to act: its tone, what to prioritize and what to avoid. What it knows about your business (services, prices, policies) goes in Knowledge instead. Both are optional, because the assistant already handles greetings, Spanish and English, tickets and transfers on its own.
Where to write them
- Go to Assistants and click Configure on an assistant.
- Open the Behavior tab.
- Write in General behavior.
- Click Save. Reset discards changes you haven't saved yet.
WhatsApp and ticket assistants also have Per-channel instructions, one box per channel (for example WhatsApp or HostBill). They add to the general behavior and only apply on that channel. Use them for things like "On WhatsApp, keep replies to two short paragraphs."
Click Guide: how to write instructions for the assistant above the editor for a quick checklist.
Six rules that work
- Short and focused. Only the rules that really matter. Long instructions make answers worse and can contradict each other.
- Use
#section titles, such as# Tone,# Pronunciationor# Special cases. - Write situations, then actions. "When the caller asks about prices, explain the cheapest option first."
- Say what to do, not long reasoning about why.
- Go easy on "always", "never" and "must". They make the assistant rigid. Save them for what's truly critical.
- Add a short example or two. It's one of the easiest ways to improve answers.
Good vs. bad examples
| Instead of this | Write this |
|---|---|
| "Be nice and professional and helpful and always answer everything perfectly." | Under # Tone: "Warm and brief. Use the caller's first name once if they give it." |
| "Our prices are $10, $20 and $35 and we're open 8 to 5." | Put prices and hours in Knowledge. Instructions are for behavior. |
| "NEVER EVER talk about anything except hosting!!!" | "When the caller asks about something we don't offer, say so briefly and offer a ticket." |
| "Answer in Spanish or English depending on the customer." | Leave it out. The assistant already does this. |
| "You must always transfer angry customers." | "When a caller is upset about an outage, apologize once and offer to pass them to the team." |
A complete, short example:
# Tone
Friendly and direct. Short sentences.
# Priorities
- When the caller asks about prices, mention the cheapest plan first.
- When the caller wants to cancel, ask briefly why before offering a ticket.
# Pronunciation
Say "Acme" as "AK-mee".
Good to know
- Write facts in Knowledge, not here. See Write good business information.
- Don't ask for something your account doesn't have. For example, if transfers aren't set up, an instruction to "transfer billing calls" won't work: the assistant only offers what's available.
- The assistant won't follow instructions to ask for card numbers, passwords or one-time codes. That's a built-in safety rule.
- Make a test call after each change to hear the result.
- On a phone assistant, the same tab has Call tags. See Tag your calls.