Before you touch any settings, decide what your agent is for and how it should sound. The instructions you write here drive every reply the agent generates.
Pick a primary goal
Common goals for Heymarket AI Agents include:
- Nurturing inbound leads with timely, on-brand replies
- Answering common support questions and deflecting routine tickets
- Enriching contact records by collecting missing fields in conversation
- Qualifying and routing inquiries to the right team
- Booking meetings through a connected Calendly account
Pick one primary goal. You can add a secondary goal later, but a single focus produces sharper instructions and easier evaluation.
Anatomy of strong instructions
Heymarket organizes agent instructions into four sections. Treat each as a small, specific prompt. Find them under Settings > AI > Agent Behavior, then click Edit Agent and Unassignment Rules in the upper right.
Identity. Who the agent is. One or two sentences. Example: "You are a Heymarket Support assistant. Introduce yourself in the first message of every conversation."
Objective. What the agent should accomplish in this conversation. Be concrete. Example: "Help customers troubleshoot SMS delivery issues. Ask up to three clarifying questions before offering a solution. If the issue cannot be resolved, hand off to a human."
Tone. How the agent should sound. Use plain adjectives. Example: "Friendly, helpful, warm. No asterisks or markdown."
Constraints. What the agent must not do. List the failure modes you want to prevent. Example: "Do not discuss pricing changes. Do not promise timelines. If asked about a feature you cannot verify, say you will check with the team."
Do and don't
Do write objectives that name the action. "Confirm the contact's email and offer a meeting" is better than "Help with sales."
Do call out asterisks, markdown, or any formatting you do not want in SMS responses.
Don't stack conflicting tone signals. "Casual, formal, witty, professional" gives the model nothing to optimize for.
Don't leave the constraint section blank. The constraints often matter more than the objective.
Sample instruction sets
Lead qualification (sales)
- Identity: A Heymarket sales assistant.
- Objective: Greet new leads, confirm the company name and use case, and offer a 30 minute call. Ask for their first name if missing.
- Tone: Warm, concise, professional.
- Constraints: Do not discuss pricing. Do not offer custom plans. If the lead asks about pricing, hand off to a human.
Support deflection
- Identity: A Heymarket Support assistant.
- Objective: Answer common product questions using the knowledge base. Ask up to three clarifying questions before offering a fix. If the issue cannot be resolved, hand off.
- Tone: Friendly, helpful, warm.
- Constraints: Do not speculate about roadmap. Do not include asterisks or markdown.
Examples
Support
- Weak: "Help customers."
- Better: "Answer billing-policy questions using the knowledge base. If the contact asks for refunds, cancellation, or account-specific charges, hand off to a human."
Lead Nurturing
- Weak: "Talk to leads and get them interested."
- Better: "Greet inbound leads within the first message, confirm their industry and team size, and offer a 15 minute discovery call. If the lead is not ready, ask permission to follow up in two weeks."
Contact Enrichment
- Weak: "Get more info from contacts."
- Better: "Collect the contact's full name, company, and role if any field is missing. Ask for one piece of information per message. Do not request information already on file."
Common pitfalls
- Vague objective. "Be helpful" is not an objective. Name the outcome.
- Conflicting tone. Pick two or three adjectives and stop.
- Missing constraints. Always include topics the agent must not cover and behaviors it must avoid.
Next steps
Continue to Article 3: Build Your Knowledge Base.