Step 1: Define Your Goal and Your Call Reasons

Before you write a line of prompt, answer these in writing:

1. What problem does the agent solve? One sentence. (“After 6 p.m. nobody picks up and we lose appointment requests.”)
2. Which call reasons should it handle? Three to five at most. List them in order of frequency.
3. Which call reasons should it explicitly not handle? Those go to a human — see Transfer to a Human.
4. What counts as success per call? Appointment booked? Email captured? Question answered? That is what you will measure later — see Metrics Worth Tracking.
5. Where do the results go? Inbox, calendar, CRM, team chat?
6. Who takes over when the agent can’t? Name, number, hours.

The most common mistake here is wanting everything at once. An agent with three clean flows beats one with twelve half-finished ones.

Continue to Where Information Belongs.