Team Assist Best Practices

Team Assist works best when two things are true: the canned responses on your team's panel match what your team actually needs at the start of a Conversation, and your team knows how to prompt it once a session is underway. This article covers both – how to design canned responses that hold up on the first click, and the prompting habits that get better answers and drafts out of Team Assist.

For the setup steps themselves, see Set Up Team Assist. For day-to-day usage, see Use Team Assist.

Designing canned responses

Start with discovery, not guesswork

Before you build any buttons, ask your team two questions:

• What are your top 3 Contact types?

• What's the first thing an Agent needs on almost every Contact?

The answer tells you what to build. Match the need to an opener:

• Need orientation → a Getting started button (summary + context + a suggested next step)

• Order-heavy contacts → an Order status button

• Policy-heavy contacts → a Find an answer button

• Want a fast first draft → a Draft a reply button

Start with 3 to 5 canned responses matched to your top Contact types. Add more once your team is comfortable – a panel with fifteen buttons on day one is harder to learn than a panel with three.

A canned response is what starts the Team Assist session

Anything that only makes sense after a draft already exists ("make it shorter," "add a line," "translate my reply") isn't a canned response; it's a prompt your team types manually once a session is underway. Buttons created from context-dependent prompts will likely leave Agents with a confusing answer – Team Assist has nothing to work from yet.

This is the most common way a canned response setup goes wrong, so it's worth checking every button against the rule: would this make sense as the very first thing typed into a brand-new session? If not, it belongs in the prompting habits below, not on the panel.

Examples

The standard fast path. Good for any Conversation, especially for newer Agents or anything unfamiliar:

1. Click Catch me up.

2. Ask a scoped policy question: "What's our policy on [issue] for [situation]? Answer in 2–3 sentences."

3. "Draft a reply from the answer above."

4. "Make this reply shorter."

5. Review, then send.

The multi-part opener. Some teams want one button to do more work in a single click instead of chaining several. One Customer's ask (the kind of request that shapes a custom canned response) combined four things into a single opener: a Conversation summary, relevant customer context, a recommended next step, and a first-pass draft – all from one click. The button's message reads something like:

"Summarize this conversation, pull relevant context on this customer, recommend a next step, and draft a reply based on all of that."

This works because it's still initiator-only – everything it asks for is available the moment a session starts — it just asks for more of it at once. It's a good pattern for repeat Customers or long-history contacts, where an Agent needs the fuller picture before they can act, not just a single summary.

Team Assist playbooks for common situations

Use these as starting points and adjust the bracketed details to fit your Answers and brand tone.

The standard fast path. Best for any Conversation, especially for newer Agents:

1. Click Catch me up.

2. "What's our policy on [issue] for [situation]? Answer in 2–3 sentences."

3. "Draft a reply from the answer above."

4. "Make this reply shorter."

5. Review, then send.

A repeat customer with a long history. Best for a repeat Contact, a long thread, or context that predates this message:

1. Click Catch me up.

2. "Summarize everything with this customer across their full history, not just this thread – common contact reasons, what they like and don't like, and their typical sentiment."

3. "Summarize their order history: what they purchase, order and line-item statuses, any issues, and how each was resolved."

4. "Based on everything you've pulled, what do you recommend I do next?"

5. "Draft an email reply that addresses their current request, acknowledges they're a returning customer, and matches how they like to be handled."

6. If the context comes back as a wall of text, re-ask it scoped: "as three takeaways" or "in 2–3 sentences."

A dispute or escalation. Best for a frustrated Customer, a multi-part issue, or something that couldn't be resolved earlier:

1. Click Catch me up, then widen it: "Summarize everything with this customer, including what happened before this reached me and anything already tried."

2. Click Check sentiment before you write a word.

3. "What's our policy on [issue] for [situation]?"

4. "Draft a reply that opens by acknowledging what they've already been through, then addresses the issue directly."

5. "Add a line acknowledging this has taken longer than it should, and keep the rest of the reply exactly as it is."

6. Review, then send.

Finding a policy or product answer. Best for a sourced answer, especially anything multi-part or spread across the conversation:

1. Click Find an answer.

2. "What's our policy on [specific issue] for [specific situation]? Answer in 2–3 sentences."

3. If it's multi-part: "Search the knowledge base for everything relevant to what the customer is asking and give me one combined answer that covers all of it."

4. "Draft a reply from the answer above."

5. If no clean answer exists, ask: "Is there a source for that answer, or is this your best guess?" Treat "no confident answer" as a cue to loop in someone with more context, not a reason to guess.

Checking for a pattern before deciding. Best for an exception, refund, or claim where it's worth confirming a one-off versus a repeat:

1. Click Catch me up and Summarize this customer for the baseline.

2. "Based on their history, has this customer repeatedly asked for [refunds] across different orders? Give me a yes or no with the specific examples."

3. If there's a pattern, escalate before approving. If not, treat it as a normal one-off.

4. "Draft a reply from the answer above."

An order or account status check. Best for a factual, look-up-able question tied to an order or account:

1. Click Order status.

2. "Are there any flags on this order I should know about?"

3. "Draft a reply from the answer above."

4. Review, then send.

Prompt during a Team Assist session

Once a session is open, Team Assist is only as good as what you tell it. A few habits make the difference between a usable answer and a rambling one.

• Make one clear ask. Name the action and the subject: "Draft a reply about the delayed order," not "order?" A vague ask gets a vague answer.

• Name the tone when you want a draft. "Draft a firm but empathetic reply" is the single most reliable way to lift draft quality. Don't leave tone to guesswork.

• Say where to look when it matters. "Check the knowledge base" or "look at their order history" tells Team Assist which source to prioritize.

• Point by position. "Use the tone from the first one, but shorter" beats re-describing what you want from scratch.

• Name the shift. When the topic changes mid-conversation, say so directly — "they're now asking about a price match, not the return" — rather than assuming Team Assist caught it.

• Shorter and clearer beats longer. A specific, short ask outperforms a long, rambling one every time.

Starter prompt library

Type these as written, filling in the bracketed part. Being specific – naming the scope, the dimensions you want, and the length – is what turns Team Assist from a search box into a real co-pilot.

Summarize

• "Summarize this customer's history, but only include what's related to [topic]."

• "Catch me up on this customer's conversations from the last [30] days."

• "Summarize this entire conversation in detail — don't skip or shorten any part of it."

Draft and refine

• "Draft a reply from the answer above."

• "Make this reply shorter, friendlier, more formal, or more empathetic."

• "Add a line that [specific thing], and keep the rest of the reply exactly as it is."

• "Use the tone from the first one, but make it shorter."

Find an answer

• "What's our policy on [specific issue] for [specific situation]?"

• "Summarize what we've confirmed about [specific issue] only, in 2–3 sentences."

• "Search the knowledge base for everything relevant to what the customer is asking, and give me one answer that covers all of it."

Build context

• "Summarize everything we've covered in this session so far into what we actually know about the issue."

• "List the key facts from this conversation as a short bulleted list, no paragraphs."

• "Based on this conversation, what information is still missing before I respond?"

Check for a pattern

• "Is this someone who has repeatedly asked for refunds on different orders based on their history?"

• "Does the customer's history show anything similar to the claim they're making right now?"

Calls and documentation

• "Catch me up on this call."

• "What did the customer say about [topic] earlier in this call?"

• "Summarize this call as a post-contact note — what the customer needed, what was resolved, and any follow-up required."

• "List every action I took this conversation — what was done, which record it affected, and the outcome."

Order and account

• "What's the status of this order?"

• "What's the status of this customer's most recent order?"

• "Are there any flags on this order I should know about?"

Translation

• "Translate the customer's most recent message into English."

• "Translate my reply into [language] before I send it."

If more than one answer comes back with no way to drop it into your reply, type: "Draft a reply that covers all the answers and context you provided me." The draft, and a Use button, appear once you ask.