AI Service Agent Content Optimization version 2.0
- mcoppert
- Aug 15
- 5 min read
Optimizing content for AI Service Agents
How to produce support content that's optimized for AI Service Agents.
Creating Knowledge for AI Support Agents
AI service agents can instantly provide your customers and team members with precise, reliable answers by drawing from your existing support content. To ensure your material is ready for AI support, here’s how you can prepare both new and old content.
Developing New Content
When building new support materials, focus on addressing gaps in your current knowledge base.
Identify trends: Pay attention to common questions that appear in customer conversations, and consider writing an article to answer them. Are your teammates missing the resources they need to troubleshoot specific issues?
Review existing data: Use reports on your current support content to find articles that need to be improved. For content accessed by service agents, the Content Performance chart in your Custom Report can show you which articles have the best or worst engagement and resolution rates, or which ones frequently lead to a handoff to a human agent.
Refining Existing Content
Articles that are simple, direct, and thorough are easier for both service agents and humans to understand. If a human finds your content confusing, an AI will, too.
Key areas to focus on include:
Simplifying your language: Consider how your users phrase their questions, and ensure your answers are written in a way that is relevant and easy to access. Avoid providing simple "yes" or "no" answers; instead, use complete sentences to clarify the information for the AI.
Building a scannable structure: A streamlined content structure is helpful for both humans and AI. Use formatting like headings, tables, and bullet points to help service agents quickly find and retrieve the information your customer or teammate is searching for.
Specifying the target audience: If your support content serves a variety of user types, make sure each piece of content clearly states which type of user it is intended for. You can also use audience rules to target content to specific customer segments with Fin.
Auditing for accuracy: Since different teams, like sales, engineering, legal, and security, may create content, a good practice is to divide your content by owner and have each team or subject matter expert (SME) review their area of knowledge.
Defining key terms: The first time you use special terms or acronyms, explain what they mean, even if you assume your audience already knows.
Prioritizing Updates
Use these tips to help you decide which updates to tackle first:
Sort your content by 'Last updated' to find material that is most likely to be out of date.
Identify the high-traffic articles in your Help Center and make them as straightforward and informative as possible.
Not all inaccuracies are of equal importance. Updating content to reflect small aesthetic or internal workflow changes is less urgent than updating for major functional or usability changes to your product or service.
Best Practices for AI-Friendly Content
These practices apply to all your knowledge content enabled for service agents, including snippets and external sources.
Remove ambiguity: If something is confusing or vague for a human, it will be equally ambiguous for a service agent. This could lead to incorrect answers or failure to respond.
Good practice: It is easier to collaborate on projects when you invite teammates to join your team.
Poor practice: It’s easier when you invite teammates.
Rephrase questions: You don't need a formal question-and-answer format, but write your content as if you are in a radio interview and want to avoid being quoted out of context.
Good practice: You can use your own packaging for a return or exchange; there is no need to save the original shipping box.
Poor practice: Do I need to use the original outer shipping box to ship back a return item? No.
Use headers effectively: Headings (H1, H2, or H3) are important for making your content scannable for both AI service agents and humans. Additionally, include some of the header information in the paragraph below it, in case the service agent doesn't properly capture the headings in the HTML.
Good practice: Check out as a guest To check out as a guest, click ‘Checkout as guest’ and enter your email address. This is needed to confirm your order and provide shipping updates.
Check out as a logged in user To check out as a logged-in user, sign in or create a new account by clicking ‘Sign in’ at checkout. This allows you to collect points and keep all your orders in one place.
Poor practice: Checking out can be done as a guest or logged-in user. Click ‘Checkout as guest’ and enter your email address. This is needed to confirm your order and provide shipping updates. You can also sign in or create a new account by clicking ‘Sign in’ at checkout.
Format with bulleted lists: An AI performs better when long, detailed paragraphs are formatted into clear bulleted lists.
Good practice: You can use Projects to:
Create and manage tasks in one place.
Get a clear overview of timelines and stay on track.
Collaborate efficiently with your entire team.
Poor practice: You can do lots of things with Projects, like creating and managing tasks, getting an overview of timelines to stay on track, and collaborating efficiently with your whole team.
Avoid complex math: If you have a complex process that involves math, carefully explain each step. If you want a service agent to handle questions that involve calculations, include examples that clearly show how the sum is calculated.
Good practice: Returns can take up to 12 business days to appear in your account. The shipment may take up to 7 days to arrive at our warehouse, and processing can take an additional 5 days. If your return has been posted to your account but you are waiting for the refund to appear on your payment method, it could take up to 5 additional business days.
Poor practice: Refunds for returns can take 7 days for the shipment to arrive, then 5 days to process the refund, and 5 more days for the refund to be credited to your account.
Include contact information: If contact numbers or addresses are specific to a certain situation, clearly label them.
Good practice: Contact Sales team: (800) 555-1212
Contact Support team: (800) 555 1212
Advertise with us: (800) 555 1212
Poor practice: Contact us Sales: (800) 555 1212 Support: (800) 555 1212 Advertising: (800) 555 1212
Use FAQs or snippets: AI agents are most valuable when they can resolve high-volume, repetitive questions. If you have small pieces of information that don't need a full article, include them as a list of FAQs in a single public article or create snippets. The AI will still be able to find and serve them to customers. It is strongly recommended to use headings (H1, H2, H3) for each question.
Good practice: Can I have a free trial? Yes, all new customers get a 1-month free trial after signing up.
Poor practice: Excluding this information from your support content and missing out on easy resolutions.
Give context to multimedia: AI service agents cannot use images and videos to provide answers yet. If you include multimedia in your support content, also include step-by-step text instructions to guide the user through the process. As a bonus, this makes your content more accessible to visually impaired users and caters to different learning styles.
Good practice: To create new projects, just follow these steps:
From your dashboard, navigate to your projects page and click the plus icon (+) in the top left of your toolbar.
Add a project name. Make sure it's clear and explains what the project is about at a glance.
Success! Your project will now be visible on your "My Projects" page.
Poor practice: The original document does not provide a poor practice example for this section.
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