Write effective instructions
Tell your agent what to do, how to communicate, and when to involve your team.
Your agent's instructions explain its job. Write them as you would brief a new teammate: who they are helping, what a good answer looks like, and when they should ask for help.
For a chat agent, edit System Prompt in General Settings. For a voice agent, use Behavior → Instructions. Save your changes before testing them.
How chat instructions work together
Your instructions define the agent's role, supported tasks, business policies, and workflow. They can include onboarding, troubleshooting, or creating content as part of helping customers use your product. Without custom instructions, the agent provides general support for your products and services.
Chatbyte's privacy, factuality, language, tool, and response-format rules take precedence over your instructions. Instructions cannot grant access to another customer's data, create unavailable capabilities, or make an action successful before it completes. Choose response languages in the language settings and keep your written prompt consistent with them: conflicting language instructions can still cause incorrect model responses.
In Auto, the agent honors an explicit language request, otherwise follows the customer's language. Short ambiguous replies such as “OK” preserve the conversation language. An optional Starting language applies only before a language is established. Without it, the agent uses the browser language when available, then English. The language you write your prompt in does not set the reply language.
Tone and answer-length settings are defaults. Specific instructions in your prompt take precedence over those defaults, including when a workflow needs a detailed explanation or plain text.
A Customer context override can replace your saved prompt for a conversation. Additional instructions refine that prompt and take precedence where they differ. Customer facts and variable values provide information; they do not change the agent's instructions.
Start with the job
Describe the audience and the work the agent should do. Specific instructions are easier to test than broad phrases such as “be helpful.”
Help customers understand our products and delivery options. Use the available knowledge to answer their questions. If you cannot confirm an answer, say what is missing and explain the next step.
Keep company facts and policies in the agent's articles and FAQs so they are easier to maintain. Use the instructions to explain how the agent should apply that information.
Set the tone
Describe the style you want: short or detailed answers, formal or conversational language, and any terminology your team uses.
For voice, consider how the answer sounds aloud. Ask for short sentences and one question at a time when collecting several details. Configure the actual voice and languages in Persona, alongside the written instructions.
Explain limits and next steps
Tell the agent what it may promise and what needs review. For example:
Collect the customer's preferred appointment time, but explain that the team must confirm availability. Do not say the appointment is booked unless the booking action confirms it.
If a request should become a follow-up, configure a task type with the details your team needs. If the agent should take an action in another system, configure and assign the relevant tool, then use the instructions to explain when to call it.
Handle missing information
Explain whether to ask a follow-up question, use an available lookup, or pass the request to your team. Avoid instructing the agent to guess account details, prices, or policy exceptions.
Customer context can supply relevant information at the start of a conversation. Keep your instructions consistent with what that connection actually provides.
Personalize with variables
Use Insert a variable below the chat prompt to add a contact name, agent name, company name, or current date/time. Chat and voice share the {{variable_name}} syntax. For example:
Help {{contact_first_name}} with their {{plan}} plan.
Use the available account facts instead of asking the customer to repeat them.The contact and company fields come from the admitted conversation. company_brand_name uses the organization's name in chat. Time variables use UTC. Your Customer context connection can supply custom values such as plan; dynamic values take precedence over fields and built-in values with the same name.
Missing values are omitted from replies or requested when needed. Use tools for facts that must be current: initialization data is a snapshot, and a follow-up message does not refresh it. Voice-only fields, such as the called number, are not automatically available in chat.
Test and improve
Use a small set of realistic examples: a common question, a request with missing information, a request outside the agent's role, and one that needs a task or action.
Review the actual answers and results. Instructions help guide behavior, but testing is still necessary. Change one unclear instruction at a time, then repeat the examples. Review instructions whenever your products, policies, or workflows change.
For a concrete investigation, follow Improve an incorrect answer. It helps distinguish a knowledge gap from an instruction, context, or tool problem.