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Your FAQ page is the single best thing you can give a new agent. It is already written in customer language, it already covers the questions people actually ask, and it takes about ten minutes to get in. If you only upload one thing before going live, upload this.

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Before you start

  • An agent. See Create your first agent.
  • Ten minutes.
  • Your FAQ page, help centre, or the document your team pastes from when answering emails.
  • You will be working in Knowledge in your workspace.

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Steps

1

Find where your answers already live

In order of usefulness: your FAQ page, your help centre, the canned replies your team sends, and the last month of customer emails. The last one is the most honest source, because it shows the questions people ask rather than the ones you expected.
2

Create an FAQ folder

Go to Knowledge and create a folder called “FAQs”. Keeping it separate from prices and policies means you can update it without touching anything else. See Organise material with folders.
3

Add the page or paste the text

Add your FAQ page by URL, or paste the questions and answers in as a note. Pasting is better if your page is buried in web design, because you control exactly what your agent reads.
4

Cut anything that will not work on the phone

Screenshots, tables of comparison, and “click here” instructions do nothing for a caller. Rewrite those as a sentence somebody can say out loud, or remove them.
5

Attach the folder and call your agent

Open your agent, go to Knowledge, select the FAQs folder, and save. Then ring your agent and ask it your five most common questions, in the words a customer would use. See Test your agent yourself.

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You will know it worked when

You ask your agent the five questions your team answers most often, and it answers all five correctly without you having written a single instruction about them.

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How to write an FAQ your agent can use

The format that works is plain question and answer pairs, one topic each:
What makes the difference:
  • Ask the question the way a customer asks it. “Do you take walk ins” beats “Walk in policy”.
  • Answer in one or two sentences. Your agent is reading this out loud to somebody on a phone.
  • Include the number. Prices, durations, and ages are what callers ring for.
  • Add the questions you wish people did not ask. Refunds, delays, complaints. Your agent handles those badly only because nobody told it how.
  • One answer per question. Two answers that disagree is the main reason an agent hedges.

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What else you can do here

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If it did not work

Your agent answers some questions but not others. Those answers are not in the folder, or they are buried inside a paragraph about something else. Split them into their own question and answer pair. It gives an old price. The old price is still in a file somewhere. Search your knowledge for the number and remove every copy. One authoritative source per fact. See Why it answered wrong. It says it does not know, but the answer is in the FAQ. Check the folder is attached to that agent in its Knowledge tab, and that the file finished processing. Adding your FAQ page by URL brought in navigation and footer text. Paste the content in as a note instead, so your agent reads the answers rather than your menu. It answers correctly but at length. Set Answer Length to Concise and shorten the answers themselves. See Give your agent a personality.

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FAQ

Yes. Add the page by URL or paste the questions and answers in as a note, in a folder called FAQs, then attach that folder to your agent in its Knowledge tab. It is the highest value ten minutes you can spend before going live.
Plain question and answer pairs, one topic each, phrased the way customers phrase them, answered in one or two sentences. Skip screenshots, comparison tables, and anything that says “click here”.
Start with the ten your team answers most often, then add whatever callers actually ask that your agent could not answer. Growing it from real calls beats writing fifty up front.
Knowledge. Instructions are for how your agent behaves, knowledge is for what it knows. Facts in instructions have to be rewritten every time a price changes. See What your agent can learn.
If you added the page by URL, updating the page and re adding it keeps them together. If you pasted the text, they are separate copies, so pick one as the master and update the other when it changes.
Close, but not word for word. It answers in its own voice using your facts, at the tone and length you set. If specific wording is legally required, put that requirement in your instructions.