How to Write Bot Instructions That Make Your AI Customer Support Actually Good

There's a common pattern with AI customer support tools: merchants set them up with a few lines of instructions, get mediocre replies, and conclude the AI isn't good enough. The AI is usually fine. The instructions are the problem.

Think of your instructions as the briefing you'd give a new support hire on their first day. A new employee who doesn't know your return policy, your shipping timeline, your tone of voice, or how to handle common edge cases is going to give bad support. An AI in the same position does exactly the same thing.

What to include in your bot instructions

1. What you sell and who your customers are

Keep this brief but concrete. The bot uses it to understand context and set the right tone.

2. Your return and refund policy — exactly

Don't summarize. Write it out the way you'd want a customer to hear it.

3. Your shipping timeline

Include both processing time and transit time. Many "where is my order" emails happen because customers don't know about the processing step.

4. How to handle common situations

List the edge cases you deal with regularly and write explicit instructions for each. This is where vague instructions fail most often.

5. Tone, format, and what never to do

Small format rules have an outsized impact on how replies feel.

Common mistakes that produce bad replies

• Too vague on policies. "We have a flexible return policy" tells the bot nothing. It needs the actual terms — timeframe, conditions, who pays shipping — to give a useful answer.
• Missing key scenarios. If you don't write instructions for how to handle a specific situation, the bot will improvise based on general knowledge. Sometimes that's fine; sometimes it says something you wouldn't. Write out the situations you care about.
• No tone guidance. Without tone instructions, the AI defaults to a generic, slightly formal support style. If your brand is casual and warm, say so explicitly — and give examples of phrases to use and avoid.
• Never updating after launch. Your instructions are a living document. Every time the bot handles something poorly, that's a signal to update the instructions. The best-performing setups are iterated on regularly, not written once and forgotten.

Setting up and iterating in Chepa

In Chepa, your bot instructions live in the connection settings panel — one text field where you write everything the bot needs to know. There's no template or form; it's intentionally open-ended because every store is different and structured templates produce generic replies.

A good first-pass instruction set takes about 20–30 minutes to write. After that, the iteration workflow is:

1. Check the conversations dashboard every few days when you're starting out
2. Read 5–10 replies and look for anything that sounds off — wrong information, wrong tone, missed opportunity to resolve something
3. Go back to the instructions and add a specific rule for anything you want to handle differently
4. After a few weeks, most edge cases are covered and you stop checking as often

The quality ceiling for AI customer support is determined entirely by the instructions. A well-written, regularly maintained instruction set produces replies that are genuinely indistinguishable from a good human support agent. A vague one produces the generic, slightly robotic support experience that gives AI tools a bad reputation.

Frequently asked questions