On an AI chatting website, the instructions you give the agent decide most of what visitors experience: how it greets them, how long its replies are, what it refuses to discuss and when it hands over. On the levelpartner.ai platform those instructions are the plain written prompt of a prompt-based agent, and most firms write them badly the first time. This article answers how to write the instructions for a website chat agent, section by section, so the conversations read as if your best salesperson wrote the script.
Instructions are a job description
Think of the instructions as the brief you would give a new hire on the front desk. Who do we serve? What do people usually want? What can you say, and what must you pass to someone else? A new hire with a vague brief improvises, and so does an agent.
The instructions are separate from the knowledge base. Knowledge tells the agent what is true. Instructions tell it how to behave. Mixing them, for example by pasting your pricing into the instructions, makes both harder to maintain.
The six sections every set of instructions needs
Role. One or two sentences: who the agent represents and who it talks to.
Goal. What a good conversation ends with, such as a booked call or a qualified lead with contact details.
Style. Reply length, tone and reading level. "Two or three short sentences. Plain English. No jargon. One question at a time."
Boundaries. Topics it must not discuss and claims it must not make, such as prices that depend on scope, advice in regulated areas, or comments about competitors.
Hand-off. When to pass the conversation to a person, and exactly what to say when it does.
Unknowns. What to do when the knowledge base has no answer: say so, and offer a person.
Before you start
- An AI agent connected to your website chat, with a knowledge base in place.
- Ten real website conversations, ideally from the last month, to test against.
- A short list of topics your firm never discusses in writing.
- The name of whoever approves wording on behalf of the business.
Draft the six sections in a document first: role in two sentences, a single goal, a style section with a length limit and one example reply, a short list of boundaries, the hand-off wording and the unknowns rule. If your current prompt mixes facts with behaviour, move the facts into the knowledge base before you start.
How to set it up
- Go to AI Agents > Conversation AI and click + Create Bot.
- Select Prompt Based Bot.
- Choose General Q&A, or Start from Scratch.
- Continue into the bot editor.
- Configure Bot Settings.
- Configure Bot Training, keeping facts in the knowledge base.
- Configure Bot Goals, writing the six sections into the prompt.
Once the prompt is saved, replay your ten real conversations in the bot's test panel and compare each reply with what you want. Edit one section at a time and retest, so you know which change fixed what.
Test with real conversations, not invented ones
Invented test questions are too tidy. Real AI chatting websites get messages like "hi do u do the thing for estate agents and how much", typed on a phone with no punctuation. Pull genuine conversations from your inbox, strip personal details and use them as your test set. The agent's weaknesses show up immediately.
Imagine the brokerage's first instructions are one paragraph asking the agent to be helpful and professional, and replies come out long, occasionally hinting at rates. A rewrite would use the six sections, ban any comment on rates or eligibility and set a three-sentence limit. The test is to replay twenty real chats against the new version, check that every reply stays within bounds and count how many end with an offer to book an adviser call.
What changes for the reader
Good instructions make AI chatting websites feel faster and more direct. Visitors get short answers, one question at a time and a clear next step. They also get honesty: a chat that says "I don't have that detail, but I can book you ten minutes with someone who does" earns more trust than a confident guess.
The most common mistake is writing instructions as a list of personality traits: friendly, helpful, knowledgeable, enthusiastic. Those words produce long, eager replies. Describe behaviour instead: how long, what to ask, when to stop. Behaviour can be tested; adjectives cannot.
Time to write and maintain
The first full set of instructions takes two to three hours including testing. After that, edit them when a pattern of bad replies shows up in your weekly review. Keep a dated copy of each version outside the platform, so you can roll back a change that made things worse.
When not to change the instructions
If the agent gives a wrong fact, fix the knowledge base, not the instructions. If it books too few meetings, look at the goal and hand-off sections before rewriting the style. Change one section at a time, or you will not know what helped.
Troubleshooting
Replies ignore the length limit. Add a short example of an ideal reply in the style section. Examples carry more weight than rules.
The agent asks several questions at once. State "ask one question per message" as a boundary, not a style preference.
It hands off too often. The unknowns section is too cautious, or the knowledge base is thin. Add answers for the topics it hands off most.
It promises things you cannot deliver. Add those promises to the boundaries section explicitly, such as "never promise a reply time shorter than one working day".
Frequently asked questions
How long should AI chat instructions be?
Most good sets fit on one page. Longer instructions tend to contradict themselves. If you need more, the extra material probably belongs in the knowledge base.
Can I use the same instructions on chat and SMS?
Mostly, with a shorter reply limit for SMS. Text messages read better at one or two sentences. Keep a channel note in the style section. See AI text messaging for SMS specifics.
Should the agent use the visitor's name?
Once, when it has it, and not in every message. Overusing a name reads as scripted. For how these conversations look across several channels, read AI chatting bot, and for placement on your pages, AI chat site. The conversational chatbot examples guide shows good replies in context.