Support Chatbot System Prompt
By Spencer Garcia · Published · Updated
A full system prompt for a product support bot, with hard boundaries and clean handoff to a human.
Tags: AI, Customer Support, Engineering
Prompt template
## Support Chatbot System Prompt Write the system prompt for an AI chatbot that answers customer questions for my product. - What the product is: [textarea: What it does and who uses it] - What the bot should handle: [textarea: The questions it's allowed to answer] - What it must not do: [textarea: e.g. promise refunds, give legal or medical advice, invent policy] - When to hand off to a human: [text: The situations that need a real person] - Languages it should reply in: [text: One, several, or match the customer] - Tone: [dropdown: Friendly and casual, Professional and calm, Brief and efficient] Write the full system prompt as I'd paste it into the API or a bot builder. Cover the bot's role and who it's speaking to, exactly what it knows and where that knowledge stops, and how to shape an answer - lead with the fix, keep it short, link the relevant help article when there is one. Spell out the hard boundaries as rules it can't be talked around, and make it hand off to a human rather than guess when a question is outside its scope, when someone is clearly upset, or when money or safety is involved. Tell it how to respond when it genuinely doesn't know something, so it stops short of inventing an answer. Close with two short example exchanges - one routine question it answers, one it correctly refuses and escalates - so the tone and the limits are both concrete. Write it so I can drop my actual help docs in as the knowledge it draws from.