Custom Prompts

Overview

There There has built-in prompts that control its AI behaviors. You can nudge each one with extra instructions in Settings > Workspace > Prompts. Your text is appended to the built-in prompt, so you only need to describe what should be different. Leave a field empty to use the defaults without any customization.

All prompt settings apply workspace-wide, across every channel and ticket.

The six prompts

Ticket titles

When a new email arrives, There There uses this prompt to generate a short, descriptive title. Good titles make scanning your inbox faster.

Use this to enforce naming conventions, for example:

"Always prefix titles with the product name in brackets, like [Acme Suite]. Use sentence case."

Greetings

This prompt guides the short greeting the AI generates for each new ticket (e.g. "Hi John,"). The greeting is available as the {{ ticket.greeting }} placeholder in reply templates.

Customize this to match your brand voice:

"Always greet in Dutch. Use formal tone with Dear + last name."

Ticket summaries

This prompt controls the brief summaries shown on the ticket detail page. Summaries help your team quickly understand long conversations without reading every message.

You might want summaries to highlight specific information:

"Always mention the customer's company name and the product area involved. Include whether the issue is resolved or still open."

AI chat assistant

These instructions are appended to the system prompt used by both the internal Ask There There agent and the public support bubble. This is the most open-ended of the six prompts, and is where you define tone, product names, and policies the AI should follow.

Weekly recaps

Appended to the prompt that generates the weekly per-channel recap emails. Use this to emphasize a product area, ignore bots, or set tone.

"Emphasize billing-related tickets. Do not dwell on spam."

Monthly recaps

Appended to the prompt that generates the monthly recap emails.

"Call out growing themes month over month."

Common use cases for AI chat assistant instructions

Tone of voice

"Always use a warm, friendly tone. Address the customer by their first name. Avoid overly formal language but remain professional."

Brand guidelines

"Our product is called 'Acme Suite', never 'the software' or 'the platform'. Always capitalize feature names: Dashboard, Reports, Integrations."

Response structure

"Start every reply with a brief acknowledgment of the customer's issue. Use bullet points when listing steps. End with an offer to help further."

Domain-specific rules

"Never promise refunds directly. Instead, direct customers to our refund policy page at example.com/refunds. For billing disputes, always recommend contacting our billing team."

Skills

Skills are separate from prompts. They are reusable, one-click prompts shown inside the Ask There There chat. Each skill has a name (what the button says) and a prompt (what gets sent to the AI). Configure them in Settings > Workspace > Skills.

Common skills include "Summarize this ticket", "Draft a reply based on our docs", and "Check for similar past tickets." You can create as many as you need and reorder them by dragging.

Best practices

Keep instructions clear and concise. The assistant follows specific, actionable instructions better than vague guidelines like "be helpful."

Test your prompts after saving. Open the AI chat on a few different tickets and verify the assistant behaves as expected.

Update prompts as your needs evolve. As your product or policies change, revisit your custom prompts to keep them accurate.

Avoid contradictions. Make sure your instructions do not conflict with each other, as this can lead to inconsistent responses.