Overview
We get it, big text fields can be scary, but this should be the least scary text field you ever encounter. This is purely an area for you to give your agent some context about why the conversation is happening.
What to Add
Don't overthink this! Just follow these two rules and you will be set.
Give your bot an Identity -
What role is the agent fulfilling for your business? Do you want them to be an assistant or a manager or maybe they are representing you, the business owner!
A great place to start is : "You are an assistant who works for [Your business name]."
How did the contact get into this conversation -
Did they reach out to you on Facebook, Instagram, a chat widget, or by clicking an ad and filling a form or maybe all of the above?
If this is the case, we can be very general try, "The contact reached out to us to learn more about [service(s) you provide].
It may be that you reached out to the contact through a Database Reactivation Campaign or a cold email. If this is the case, "Our company reached out to the contact [because they were interested in [our services]] in the past.
This field is mostly used for context. I am sure someone has handed you a phone at some point and said, "You talk to them." with no other instructions, you were probably pretty lost and awkward until you realized who you were talking to and what you needed to do. AI is the same. Telling your Agent what it's role in your company is, as well as a bit of information about whether they reached out to you or you reached out to them is just enough to stop your bot from being awkward in the first couple messages.
What NOT to Add
Most issues that we see in support come from over prompting this field or the Important Business Information field.
NEVER add any information about:
The Agent's job or goals - These should be added to your Job Flow as actions but never mentioned in Why the Conversation Is Happening.
Example of a Bad Prompt: You are an assistant to Burke, Burke, Hadley and Burke. The contact wants legal services, and your job is to find out what they are calling about, then if they need criminal law you should find out the date of the arrest and get their contact info and then book them to the right calendar. They might have also be calling about Trademark, so in that case ask what it is that they are looking to trademark and if the trademark is already in use or if they are looking to trademark it for the future.
There are some good things happening in this example. it covers everything from the What to Add rules, but it is too much information for what we are looking to do here. You may see that your Agent is working on an Objective like name/phone but it is asking trademark questions now and you don't know why. Keep the objectives in the spot they should be, in the Job Flow builder as actions.
Booking - This should only ever be mentioned inside of the Booking action.
Example of a Bad Prompt: You are an appointment setter whose main job is to answer questions the contact has and book the lead to our calendar. The contact clicked on our ad from Facebook about booking an appointment with us.
This example also follows the rules from What to Add, but because there is so much emphasis on booking the appointment, the agent may try to book before the lead is in a Booking action. This can cause the agent to say that it booked an appointment and even confirm the booking, but you will see no actual event created in your CRM.
Summary
No sense in overcomplicating this field 😅 give your agent some context, even utilizing variables from the variable search if needed! Then off to the races 🐴