Show, don't describe: three examples beat ten adjectives
Every business owner writes the same instruction sooner or later: "Be friendly but professional." Your AI assistant obliges with something that reads like a hotel brochure. The model isn't the problem. Adjectives mean something different to everyone. You wouldn't lecture a new hire about tone; you'd hand them the three best emails your team ever sent, and they'd get it by lunch. An agent learns the same way.
- Collect five real replies you're proud of. A price question, a complaint, a booking change, a polite no, straight from your inbox. Strip out names and phone numbers before anything goes near the AI.
- Add one reply you hated, labelled "never like this". A single bad example teaches faster than another rule. Stop at one, or your instructions turn into a museum of mistakes.
- Put the customer's message above each reply. The pair is what matters. The agent learns what to say to whom, not just how you sound.
- Delete the adjectives you no longer need. If the examples already use short sentences and first names, "warm, concise, approachable" is noise. Keep only the rules examples can't show, like "never quote a price without a date".
- Refresh the set once a month. When the agent writes a reply you'd frame, it goes in. The examples improve and nobody rewrites the rules.
Rules show the agent where the fence is. Examples show it the road. When I build an agent for a client, the first thing I ask for isn't a style guide. It's five replies they're proud of.