Custom role prompts (advanced)
Custom roles let you give your voice agent a very specific job and personality.
Instead of picking one of the built‑in roles (Sales, Technical Support, Customer Service), you can write your own short prompt that tells the agent who it is, how it should sound, and what it should focus on.
Use built‑in roles for most agents. Switch to a Custom role when you need tighter control over tone, behavior, or guardrails.
What a Custom role controls
Your Custom role prompt influences both what the agent says and how it sounds:
- Job & goals – what the agent is responsible for (sales, onboarding, support, triage, etc.).
- Personality – friendly, calm, high‑energy, serious, playful, formal, etc.
- Voice tone – speaking pace, warmth, enthusiasm, and how confident it should sound.
- Answer style – how short/long replies should be, how often it should ask follow‑up questions, and what to avoid.
The Custom role works together with:
- Your Knowledge Base (pages you crawled and PDFs you uploaded).
- The Starting Knowledge page or Manual Instructions you configure.
Think of it this way:
- Custom role = the character and behavior of the agent.
- Knowledge = what the agent knows and can talk about.
Where to set a Custom role
- Open the Babelbeez dashboard and make sure the correct voice agent tab is selected at the top.
- In the left sidebar, click Configure Voice Agent.
- In the Persona tab, you’ll see tiles for built‑in roles (for example, Sales, Technical Support), plus a Custom tile.
- Click the Custom tile.
- In the Custom role prompt modal, describe your agent in your own words.
- Save your changes, then test in Preview Voice Agent or Live Preview.
When Custom is selected, the built‑in role tiles are no longer used for that agent. Your Custom prompt becomes the primary description of how the agent should behave and sound.
How to write an effective Custom role prompt
You’ll get the best results by treating the prompt as a character brief for a real person, not as loose notes.
Focus on four things:
Who the agent is
Give it a clear role and personality."You are a friendly, confident sales assistant for ACME Plumbing."
Who it is talking to
Mention the typical visitor or customer."Most callers are small business owners who don’t have a technical background."
How it should sound (voice tone)
Be explicit about pace, emotion, and style."Speak at a calm, medium pace. Sound warm and reassuring, not rushed. Keep answers under 20 seconds unless the visitor asks for more detail."
What it should do and avoid
Set clear goals and guardrails."Your main goal is to qualify leads and book consultations. Ask 1–2 simple questions before offering to book. Do not invent discounts or promise custom features."
Keep the prompt short and concrete. 5–10 sentences are usually enough.
Example prompts
Example 1 – Sales concierge
You are a friendly, upbeat sales concierge for ACME Studio, a web design agency.
You are speaking to small business owners who are curious but busy and often multitasking.
Speak at a medium pace with a warm, enthusiastic tone. Sound confident, not pushy.
Ask simple questions to understand the visitor’s business, website status, and timeline.
Keep answers under 20 seconds unless the visitor asks for more detail.
Focus on benefits, pricing clarity, and next steps. Offer to book a consultation instead of closing the sale on the call.
Do not give legal or accounting advice, and do not promise custom features that aren’t mentioned on the website.
Example 2 – Technical support agent
You are a calm, patient technical support agent for ACME SaaS.
You mainly help existing customers who are frustrated or stuck.
Speak slightly slower than normal, with a steady, reassuring tone.
Use simple, concrete language instead of jargon.
Give step‑by‑step instructions and pause between steps so the customer can follow along.
If something is unclear, ask a short clarifying question instead of guessing.
Keep most answers under 30 seconds and summarize the fix at the end.
Do not speculate about future roadmap items or make billing promises; instead, direct billing questions to the Billing page or support email if needed.
You can adapt these examples to your brand voice (more playful, more formal, etc.) while keeping the structure: who you are, who you help, how you sound, what you do, what you avoid.
How Custom roles interact with knowledge and instructions
Custom roles don’t replace your Knowledge Base – they steer how the agent uses it.
- The agent still relies on the pages and documents you’ve added under Train Voice Agent.
- If you’ve picked a Starting Knowledge page or Manual Instructions, that context is still used.
- The Custom role tells the agent how to talk and what to prioritize when using that knowledge.
If answers feel technically correct but off‑brand, adjust your Custom role prompt first (tone, pace, level of detail). If answers are off‑topic or outdated, review your Knowledge Base sources.
Limits and safety
To keep everyone safe and on‑brand, Custom role prompts have a few guardrails:
- There is a character limit (up to 2000 characters) for the prompt.
- Custom prompts are automatically checked for unsafe content before they are saved.
- If your text violates content policy or cannot be validated, you’ll see an error and the change won’t be applied. Try rephrasing in neutral, professional language.
- In rare cases where safety checks are temporarily unavailable, saving may fail with a message to try again later.
These checks only affect the prompt text you write. They do not modify your Knowledge Base content.
When to use built‑in roles instead
Built‑in roles are still the fastest way to get started:
Use built‑in roles when:
- You’re creating your first agents.
- "Sales", "Customer Service", or "Technical Support" already match what you need.
- You want good defaults without thinking about phrasing.
Use a Custom role when:
- You need a very specific persona (for example, "Conference booth concierge", "VIP upsell specialist", or "Intake triage nurse").
- You care a lot about tone of voice and want to match your brand closely.
- You want to enforce tighter guardrails about what the agent should and shouldn’t say.
You can start with a built‑in role, then switch to a Custom role later once you understand how visitors talk to your site.