An AI agent answers customers exactly as well as its knowledge base is prepared. If a price is missing, the agent shouldn’t guess it. If the schedule is written vaguely, the answer will be vague too. The good news: you don’t need a developer for this. You need precise answers to the questions customers ask every day.
What a knowledge base is made of
It helps to split the information into sections: that makes it easier to check that nothing is missing and to update the data when something changes. In Mated the knowledge base has these sections:
- About the business — name, industry, what sets you apart.
- Services and prices — what you sell, in what format and at what price.
- Schedule and format — days, hours, online or in person, duration.
- Contacts — address, landmark, phone number, how to get there.
- FAQ — everything people ask again and again.
- Corrections — fixes you add after checking the answers.
- Other — anything that doesn’t fit the other sections.
Services and prices: impossible to misread
The main rule is one service, one price, one unit. “English from 450 000” is a weak entry: it’s unclear what the amount is for and what it includes. Better like this:
| Course | Format | Price |
|---|---|---|
| English for children aged 7–12 | Groups of up to 8, 90-minute lessons | 450 000 UZS a month, 8 lessons |
| English for adults, A1–B2 | Groups of up to 8, online available | 520 000 UZS a month |
| IELTS preparation | Groups of up to 8 | 890 000 UZS a month |
| Private lessons | One to one | 150 000 UZS per lesson |
Example: Gorizont, a fictional training center.
State the currency and the period: “a month”, “per lesson”, “per course”. If the price depends on conditions, say which ones. If an administrator decides such questions, write that down — the agent will pass the conversation on to them.
Schedule and contacts
Customers rarely ask “when are you open”. More often it’s “can I come on Saturday evening?”. So write the schedule in a way that answers that kind of question:
- working days and hours: Mon–Sat, 9:00–20:00;
- formats: morning and evening groups, online for adults;
- duration: 90-minute group lessons, a 30-minute trial lesson;
- address with a landmark and a phone number: Tashkent, Yunusabad district, +998 90 000 00 00 — all example data.
FAQ: use your customers’ words
Open last month’s chats and write the questions down the way customers ask them, not the way you would phrase them. “Do you have classes for kids?”, “how much a month?”, “can I try first?” — each needs a short, exact answer.
In the Gorizont example, the answer to “can I try first?” is: there is a free 30-minute trial lesson where the level is assessed. To book, the center needs a name, phone number, course, the student’s age if it’s a child, and a convenient time. Write the same list of fields into the lead section — then the agent collects the details during the conversation instead of sending the customer to fill in a form.
How to phrase answers
- Keep it short and specific: facts, numbers, conditions. Neither the agent nor the customer needs advertising language.
- Don’t write “check with a manager” where the answer is known — otherwise conversations will go to a person for no reason.
- Say what the price includes and what it doesn’t: textbooks, a trial lesson, delivery.
- If a service has several names or is called differently in other languages, write them all down: for example, “English” and “ingliz tili”.
What the agent must not do
A knowledge base sets not only the answers but also the limits. Write down what the agent doesn’t do:
- it doesn’t promise discounts or installments — an administrator decides those;
- it doesn’t confirm a booking for a specific time if a person manages the schedule;
- it doesn’t invent prices, dates or terms that aren’t in the knowledge base;
- it passes complaints to a person right away.
How to set up these rules is covered in detail in “When an AI agent should hand a chat to a person”.
Checklist for a finished knowledge base
- Every service has a price, a currency and a unit: month, lesson, course.
- The schedule answers “can I come on Saturday evening?”.
- The address with a landmark, phone number and way of working are written out in full.
- FAQ entries come from real chats, not guesswork.
- The details needed for a lead are listed.
- The topics the agent always passes to a person are written down.
- There are no outdated prices or finished promotions.
- Someone is responsible for updating the knowledge base when anything changes.
Test before you switch it on
Write to the agent as a customer: briefly, with typos, in different languages. Ask questions the knowledge base has no answer to and make sure the agent doesn’t make things up but asks for details or hands the chat to a person. Every inaccurate answer is a reason to add a correction to the knowledge base.
Keep coming back to the knowledge base after launch. When prices or the schedule change or a new course appears, update the knowledge base first — otherwise the agent will keep answering with old data.
How it works in Mated
In Mated the knowledge base is built by the setup wizard. It asks questions in order — what you sell, on what schedule, what a lead needs, when to call a person — and sorts the answers into sections. Before launch you can check the agent’s answers by writing to it as a customer, and your fixes are saved as corrections.
See what else the agent can do on the features page. To get started, sign up and go through the wizard — you can build the knowledge base before choosing a plan.
