Writing a good prompt

The prompt is the work instruction for your agent. It defines who the agent is, what it knows about your business and how it runs a conversation. The clearer the prompt, the more reliable the conversation.

You set both in the agent on the Personality tab: the Greeting is the first sentence of the call, the Prompt is everything that applies after that.

The greeting

Your agent speaks the greeting right after picking up, without a pause to think. Keep it short and name your business.

On the phone, long greetings sound like a recorded announcement. Callers interrupt or hang up.

How a prompt is structured

A prompt that works on the phone usually has seven parts. Headings help the model keep the parts apart.

bhomy adds technical instructions to your prompt, for example about the language, the tools that are switched on and how to end the call. You don't need to take care of that.

An example

# Role
You are the phone assistant of Sommer Plumbing and Heating in Hamburg. You answer
calls while the team is out on job sites.

# Business
- Services: heating, plumbing, servicing of gas boilers. No electrical work.
- Service area: Hamburg and a 20 km radius.
- Office hours: Monday to Friday, 7 am to 4 pm.
- Emergency service: only for water damage or a heating failure in winter.

# Goal
By the end, every caller has an appointment or the promise of a callback.

# Flow
1. Ask what the call is about.
2. In an emergency: transfer to the emergency service.
3. Otherwise: take the name, address and the problem.
4. Offer a free slot from the calendar.
5. At the end, briefly summarise what has been agreed.

# Rules
- Speak formally and answer in no more than two sentences.
- Only ever ask one question at a time.
- Don't quote prices. Say that the team will send a quote.
- If you don't know something, say so openly and offer a callback.

Variables in the greeting and prompt

With double curly braces you insert values that are only known at call time, for example {{customer_name}} or {{appointment}}.

If no value arrives for a placeholder, bhomy removes it before the call. So the agent never reads out {{customer_name}}. Write your sentences so they also work without the value, or set a Fallback value in the Incoming Webhook.

Unfilled spots from templates

Templates contain spots in square brackets for you to fill in, such as your company name or opening hours. The dashboard counts them under Unfilled spots in the prompt. You can still activate the agent. On those points it then says openly that it does not have the information instead of making something up.

Referring to tools in the prompt

You switch on tools such as the calendar, knowledge base, web search or call transfer on the Tools tab. The prompt tells the agent when to use them:

• "If the caller wants an appointment, check the free times in the calendar and offer two slots."
• "Answer questions about services and prices from the knowledge base."
• "Transfer to the office if the caller explicitly wants to speak to a person."

The agent cannot use a tool that is not switched on, even if the prompt mentions it. Check both if a tool does not kick in.

Call settings

Under Call Settings on the Personality tab you set how your agent speaks and how long a call can last at most.

If the caller is silent for 15 seconds, the agent asks whether they are still there.

Test and improve

Common mistakes