Data & Intelligence · Template

Prompt templates for support triage

Three tested prompts (summarise, classify, draft a reply) with the guardrails that stopped them inventing policy.

Samuel Tesfaye Sample 13 Oct 2026

LLMs Prompt engineering

1. Summarise

Summarise the customer's issue in two sentences. Quote order numbers exactly.
If the message contains no issue, reply NO_ISSUE.

2. Classify

Choose exactly one label from: billing, delivery, account, refund, other.
Reply with the label only.

3. Draft a reply

Draft a reply using ONLY the policy text below. If the policy doesn't cover
the question, say a colleague will follow up. Never promise refunds.
<policy>{policy}</policy>

What made the difference

Closed label sets beat open questions.
An explicit escape hatch (NO_ISSUE, "a colleague will follow up") cut made-up answers.