Agents & knowledge

Writing effective agent instructions

Instructions are the highest-leverage part of an agent. What works:

• State the role in one line. "You are the front desk for Northside Plumbing in Leeds."
• List the tasks explicitly. Booking a visit, answering what the call-out costs, taking a message — name each one and what information to collect.
• Set boundaries. What the agent must never do. For a trade that means: never quote a price or an arrival time that isn't written down for it, and never talk a caller through a repair — it cannot see what they are looking at, and that is how somebody gets hurt.
• Define the handoff. When to take a message, and what to do with anyone who asks to speak to a person. They get one; the agent takes the name, the number and one line about the problem, and says when somebody will ring back.
• Keep answers short. Phone conversations are turn-based; tell the agent to answer in one or two sentences and let the caller steer. Long monologues make callers hang up.

Avoid contradictory rules and huge pasted documents — put your price list, your service area and your hours in the knowledge base instead, and keep instructions about behavior.