A general AI chatbot does not know your prices, your services, your tone or your policies, so every answer needs editing. Most AI tools now let you build a private assistant with your own documents and standing instructions: Custom GPTs in ChatGPT, Projects in Claude, Gems in Gemini, and Copilot agents in Microsoft 365.
Set one up once and your team can ask it to draft quotes, answer customer questions, write posts or explain a procedure, in your voice and with your facts.
How to set it up
- Gather your knowledge: services and prices you share, policies, FAQs, your brand voice guide, procedures (SOPs), templates.
- Create the assistant in the tool your team already uses and upload those documents.
- Paste the instructions from the prompt below, filled in for your business.
- Test it with 20 real questions and fix the documents where it gets things wrong.
assistant-instructions.txt
You are the internal AI assistant for [business name], a [what we do] in [city]. Who uses you: [e.g. our office team and owner] Your jobs: [e.g. draft replies to customer emails, write quotes from notes, write social posts, answer staff questions about our procedures] How we sound: [paste "our voice in one paragraph" from the brand voice guide] Rules: - Use only the facts in the attached documents for prices, policies, services, timelines and guarantees. If the answer is not in the documents, say "I don't have that in my notes" and suggest who to ask. - Never invent prices, discounts, availability or promises. - When drafting for customers: short, warm, clear next step, Canadian English. - Ask one clarifying question when a request is ambiguous instead of guessing. - Flag anything that sounds like a complaint, legal issue, refund or safety concern for a person to handle. Attached documents: [list what you upload, e.g. services-and-prices.pdf, faq.docx, policies.pdf, brand-voice.pdf, SOPs] When you start a new conversation, briefly say what you can help with.
Good habits
- One assistant per job (sales replies, marketing, internal help) works better than one that does everything.
- Keep the documents current: an outdated price list means outdated answers.
- A human checks anything sent to customers, at least until you trust it.
Use a business plan of your AI tool that does not train on your data, and do not upload customer personal information, passwords or financial records unless your plan and policies allow it.