You train an AI agent the way you train a new employee: give it your SOP, your price list and your real past chats, say clearly what it must never do, test it with tricky questions, then correct it every week. The agent only knows what you write down, so clear documents matter more than technical skill.
- Treat training as onboarding a new hire: documents, examples, rules, a trial period, then feedback.
- Write the price list as a clean table with conditions, so the agent never guesses.
- Give the SOP as steps and exceptions, including what must go to a human.
- Use your best real chats as examples, and remove the bad ones.
- Review stopped and failed chats weekly, and update the documents when prices change.
How do you train an AI agent with your own SOP and price list?
You train an AI agent by giving it your written business information, showing it how good conversations go, setting boundaries, and checking its answers until they match what your best staff would say. The process is closer to onboarding than to programming.
Imagine a new receptionist starting on Monday. You would hand over the price list, explain how bookings work, say what to escalate and let them shadow a colleague. Then you would check their first few days. The same sequence works for an AI employee, and it is the reason this is a task for the owner or a manager, not for a programmer.
Day to day, the agent reads your material when it answers, which is why the quality of your documents decides the quality of the replies. AWS explains the underlying idea in its page on retrieval-augmented generation: the model looks up trusted information before it answers instead of relying on memory.
What materials does the agent need?
The agent needs four kinds of material: facts, rules, examples and limits. Missing one produces a particular kind of mistake.
| Material | What it contains | If it is missing |
|---|---|---|
| Price list | Items, prices, conditions, deposits, add-ons | The agent avoids prices or guesses |
| SOP | How an enquiry becomes a booking or sale, step by step | The agent answers but does not move the customer forward |
| FAQ | Your most repeated questions with approved answers | Staff keep being pulled in |
| Past chats | Good conversations in your customers' own words | Replies sound stiff and miss slang |
| Limits | What it must never say or promise | Risk of wrong promises |
On ChatsHero, Super AI builds the bot flow and prompts and can learn from filtered chats, PDFs and FAQs. Filtered matters. Feed it your best conversations, not every conversation.
How should you format the price list?
Format the price list as a clean table with one row per item and the conditions in the same row. Scattered notes and images of handwritten lists make the agent less reliable.
| Column | Example entry (illustrative) | Why it helps |
|---|---|---|
| Item or package name | Standard service, 3 units | The agent uses your exact name |
| Price | RM___ | Exact figure, not a range, unless you want a range |
| Conditions | Weekdays only, outside Klang Valley extra | Prevents wrong promises |
| Deposit and payment | Deposit to confirm, balance on completion | Answers the second question customers ask |
| Who approves changes | Owner only | Sets the hand-over |
| Valid until | Update date | Avoids stale prices |
Where a price depends on measurement, such as renovation, curtains or catering, tell the agent which questions to ask instead of giving it a number. If your prices change with every customer and nothing is written down, write the price logic first. No agent can fix an undefined price. For an example of a trade that quotes this way, read about catering quotations on WhatsApp.
How should you write the SOP?
Write the SOP as numbered steps with a clear exit for every difficult case. Plain sentences work better than long paragraphs.
- Greet and identify the need: ask what the customer wants in one question.
- Answer from the price list: only listed prices. If an item is not listed, say staff will confirm.
- Qualify: ask one question at a time, such as area, quantity or timeline.
- Offer a next step: two time slots, or a quotation request.
- Hand over when: the customer asks for a person, is upset, wants a discount, or the question is outside the SOP.
- Close politely: confirm what happens next.
Add a short “never” list. For example: never promise a delivery date, never quote a discount, never give medical or loan advice, never reveal another customer's details. In regulated trades such as aesthetics, loans, insurance and property, the AI informs and books, and a licensed person advises and approves.
Want to see how this looks with your own business? WhatsApp us and chat with the ChatsHero AI.
Why do real chat examples matter?
Real chat examples teach the agent your tone, your customers' words and the way your best staff move a conversation forward. Instructions alone often produce a correct but flat reply.
Pick 10 to 20 good conversations. Remove names and phone numbers, and treat the rest under the PDPA. Leave out chats where staff were rude, wrong or slow, because the agent will copy what it sees. Our post on training a WhatsApp AI with voice notes and screenshots shows another way to feed examples.
What the conversation looks like
The first chat is what an untrained agent might say. The second shows the same customer after training with a price list and SOP.
How much is the package for 2 people?
Our prices vary. Please contact our staff for more details.
How much is the package for 2 people?
For 2 people, the Duo package is RM___ and includes the items on our list. Weekends have a small surcharge. Would you like me to check a time for you?
Illustrative example. RM___ stands for the price from the business's own list.
How do you test the agent before customers see it?
Test the agent with questions designed to catch its weak spots, and let staff who know the business try to break it.
- Price questions: ask for every item on the list, plus two not on the list.
- Edge cases: public holidays, group bookings, out-of-area requests.
- Pushback: “Can give discount?” and “Others are cheaper.”
- Messy messages: Manglish, short forms, typos, voice notes and photos.
- Boundary questions: ask for advice it should refuse.
- Hand-over: ask for a person and check it works.
Record each failure and fix the document or instruction behind it. Re-run the whole list after changes, because a fix in one place can shift another.
How do you keep the agent up to date?
Keep the agent current by treating your price list and FAQ as live documents with one owner, reviewed on a schedule. Stale prices cause more trouble than most other mistakes.
- Name an owner for the documents.
- Update before promotions: festive offers, price rises and new packages.
- Keep version history, such as Google Docs version history, so you can see what changed.
- Review weekly: read the chats where customers stopped.
In our own sales data, 60 of 269 tracked ad leads stopped after the first message and 19 stopped when demo times were offered. Chats like those are the best training material you have, because they show exactly where the conversation failed.
What mistakes make an AI agent harder to train?
The common mistakes are vague documents, conflicting rules and no feedback loop.
- Two price lists that disagree.
- An SOP that says “use judgement” without saying who decides.
- Training on every old chat, including the bad ones.
- Changing prices in staff's heads but not in the document.
- Going live without testing, then blaming the AI.
How does a ChatsHero AI Agent Office learn your business?
ChatsHero, a Malaysian AI agent platform, builds each AI employee in your AI Agent Office from your own SOP, price list and FAQ. Super AI creates the bot flow and prompts, and learns from filtered chats, PDFs, FAQs and your website, so the receptionist, sales and booking agents answer the way your team would.
If you prefer not to write the setup yourself, the WE-DO plan has our team do it with you. A free 30-minute Zoom demo is the easiest way to see your own documents turned into a working agent. For the bigger picture, read what an AI Agent Office is.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I train an AI agent on my price list?
Give it a clean price table with item names, exact prices and conditions, then test it with every item and a few that are not on the list. Tell it to say staff will confirm anything missing.
What is an SOP for an AI agent?
It is your step-by-step process for handling an enquiry, including what to ask, what to offer and when to hand the chat to a person.
Do I need to write code to train it?
No. On ChatsHero, Super AI builds the bot flow and prompts from your documents, and the WE-DO plan has our team do the setup.
Can I use my old WhatsApp chats?
Yes, the best ones. Remove names and numbers, treat them under the PDPA, and leave out chats where staff gave wrong or rude answers.
How often should I update the agent?
Whenever prices, promotions or rules change, and review stopped chats weekly. Name one person as the owner of the documents.