Do you ever feel like you’re having the same conversation with ChatGPT over and over again? "Write this in a professional tone." "Act like a marketing expert." "Please remember, I’m a software developer." It’s a bit like Groundhog Day, but with a robot. If you’re tired of repeating your life story every time you open a new chat, you’re in the right place.
ChatGPT’s custom instructions are a fantastic feature for personalizing your AI chats. But what starts as a cool productivity hack for one person quickly hits a wall when you try to scale it for an entire team. This guide will walk you through creating the perfect ChatGPT custom instructions template for your own use. More importantly, we’ll pinpoint the exact moment you need to graduate from a simple template to a truly capable AI agent for your business.
What is a ChatGPT custom instructions template?
Think of custom instructions as a permanent cheat sheet you give to ChatGPT. Instead of feeding it the same background info and style guide in every single chat, you set it up once, and it remembers your preferences for all future conversations. It’s a simple feature that saves a ton of time and makes your results much more consistent.
The feature is broken down into two parts:
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“What would you like ChatGPT to know about you to provide better responses?” This is where you lay out the context. You can tell it about your job, your industry, your expertise level, or what you’re trying to accomplish. The more it knows about you, the better it can tailor its answers.
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“How would you like ChatGPT to respond?” This box is all about defining the AI’s output. You can control its tone (formal, casual, witty), formatting (bullet points, tables, code blocks), and even give it a specific persona to adopt, like a patient tutor or a sharp copywriter.
For personal use, this is a brilliant way to streamline your workflow and get better answers without all the repetitive setup.
How to create a powerful ChatGPT custom instructions template
A good template isn’t just about filling in the blanks; it’s about building a clear, specific, and reusable framework that turns the generic ChatGPT into your ChatGPT. It’s about giving it a distinct personality and a set of rules to follow.
Best practices when creating a custom instructions template
To get the most out of your template, you need to be deliberate. Here are a few tips to get you started:
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Be specific, not fuzzy: Vague instructions get you vague results. Instead of saying "be professional," try something more concrete like, "Write in a formal, objective tone, avoiding personal opinions and overly casual slang." The more specific you are, the more reliable the output will be.
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Give it a clear persona: This is one of the most effective things you can do. Tell it, "You are a senior software developer specializing in Python," or "You are a content marketer focused on SEO for B2B SaaS companies." A persona gives the AI a solid foundation for its knowledge and style.
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Set some ground rules: Tell ChatGPT what not to do. Common rules include things like, "Never apologize for being an AI," "Don’t include disclaimers like ‘As an AI language model’," or "Keep all responses under 300 words." This helps cut the fluff and gets you closer to what you want on the first try.
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Use examples to show, not just tell: While you don’t want to burn through your character limit, a quick example can work wonders. For instance, "Use Markdown for formatting, like using bold for key terms."
Wtach this video from OpenAI which talks about personalizing your GPT through custom instructions.
Pro Tip: You only have 1,500 characters for each box, so you have to be concise. Use bullet points or short phrases to pack in as much guidance as possible without wasting space.
What kind of common roles can it do?
Not sure where to begin? Here are three templates you can copy, paste, and tweak for your own needs. They show how different roles can shape the AI’s behavior to get far more useful results.
| Role | "What would you like ChatGPT to know about you?" | "How would you like ChatGPT to respond?" |
|---|---|---|
| Software Developer | I am a senior software developer working with Python and JavaScript. I value efficient, readable, and well-documented code. I’m focused on building scalable web applications. | – Provide code examples in Python. - Explain the reasoning behind your code step-by-step. - Use a direct, technical tone. - Format code blocks correctly. - Skip the intro and get straight to the technical solution. |
| Content Marketer | I am a content creator for a B2B SaaS blog. My audience consists of marketing managers. My goal is to write engaging, SEO-optimized content that drives leads. | – Write in a conversational yet authoritative tone. - Structure responses with clear headings (H2, H3). - Focus on practical, actionable advice. - Suggest relevant keywords for the topic. - End with a summary of key takeaways. |
| Student | I am a university student studying history. I need help organizing my research, outlining essays, and understanding complex historical concepts. | – Explain concepts in simple terms. - Break down complex topics into bullet points or numbered lists. - Cite credible sources when providing factual information. - Adopt the persona of a helpful, knowledgeable tutor. - Ask clarifying questions if my prompt is unclear. |
Why a simple ChatGPT custom instructions template isn’t enough for your business
Custom instructions are a massive step up for personal productivity. But when you try to apply this same model to a business, especially in customer support, you hit a wall. Hard. What works for one person’s workflow just doesn’t scale for a team and can’t handle the messy reality of customer interactions.
Here’s where a simple ChatGPT custom instructions template starts to fall apart:
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Limitation 1: It’s completely disconnected from your business data: ChatGPT’s knowledge is generic and stuck in the past. It can’t access your helpdesk, your internal knowledge base, or your order management system. It has no way of answering critical customer questions like, "Where is my order?" or "Why am I seeing this specific error message?" because it has zero context about your business, your products, or your customers. The answers it gives are educated guesses at best.
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Limitation 2: It can’t actually do anything: A custom instruction can only shape text. It can’t take action. A real support team needs an AI that can do more than just talk. It needs to be able to tag a ticket in Zendesk, escalate a tricky issue to a senior agent, update a customer’s profile, or even process a refund. ChatGPT can talk about doing these things, but it can’t perform the actions that actually solve customer problems and take work off your team’s plate.
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Limitation 3: It’s a one-size-fits-all solution: A single set of custom instructions is rigid. But a support team is dynamic. You need different rules and personas for different channels, your website chatbot should sound different from your email support. You need different workflows for different problems, like sending billing questions to finance and technical issues to engineering. A single template can’t juggle this complexity, which leads to inconsistent and often wrong answers.
From a simple custom instructions template to professional agents with eesel AI
This is the point where you have to move beyond basic prompts and into the world of professional-grade AI agents. While ChatGPT custom instructions let you put a new coat of paint on a generic engine, a platform like eesel AI lets you build a custom engine from the ground up, fueled by your own business data and plugged directly into your workflows.
Here’s how eesel AI solves the problems a simple template can’t:
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It unifies your knowledge, not just adds a few notes: Instead of just describing your business in a text box, eesel AI connects directly to all your knowledge sources. It learns from your past Zendesk or Freshdesk tickets, your internal guides in Confluence or Google Docs, and your help center articles. This makes sure that every answer is accurate, current, and specific to your business, not based on some random webpage from two years ago.
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It automates workflows with AI Actions: eesel AI does much more than just generate text. It can take action inside your existing tools. It can triage incoming tickets, apply the right tags, escalate to the right team, and even call external APIs to look up real-time order information from Shopify or your internal database. This is real automation that resolves issues, not just a fancy reply generator.
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You get total control and can test with confidence: With eesel AI, you get a fully customizable workflow engine. You can create a unique AI persona, limit its knowledge to specific sources for different situations, and set up detailed rules to decide exactly which tickets the AI should handle. Best of all, you can use the simulation mode to test your AI agent on thousands of your old tickets. This lets you see exactly how it will perform, what its resolution rate will be, and where your knowledge gaps are, all before a single customer ever talks to it. It’s a completely risk-free way to build, test, and launch.
Think of it this way: ChatGPT custom instructions let you tell your AI how to talk. eesel AI lets you build an AI that can talk, think, and act using your team’s collective knowledge.
When to use a ChatGPT custom instructions template
So, which approach is right for you? It really just comes down to what you’re trying to do. Here’s a simple breakdown to help you decide.
Use a ChatGPT custom instructions template if:
You’re an individual trying to make your personal workflow more efficient. You want to save time on repetitive prompts, get more consistent answers for your own research or content creation, and generally make ChatGPT a more useful sidekick.
Use eesel AI if:
You’re a business or part of a team that handles customer or employee support. You need to provide instant, accurate answers based on your company’s private knowledge. You need to automate workflows, resolve tickets without a human touching them, and plug an AI agent directly into your helpdesk like Zendesk, Intercom, or internal tools like Slack.
Get started with true AI automation today
Creating a ChatGPT custom instructions template is a great first step into the world of personalized AI. It gives you a peek at what’s possible when you give an AI the right context. But for a business, a peek isn’t enough. You need an AI agent that’s deeply integrated, fully autonomous, and built for the messy reality of customer support.
eesel AI is designed to bridge that gap. Unlike other tools that lock you into long sales calls and complicated setups, you can connect your helpdesk, train your agent on your knowledge, and go live in minutes, all by yourself.
Ready to move beyond basic templates and build an AI agent that truly works for your business? Try eesel AI for free and see how quickly you can put your frontline support on autopilot.
Frequently asked questions
Currently, ChatGPT only allows you to save one set of custom instructions at a time. To switch between different personas or tasks, you’ll need to copy and paste your different templates into the settings manually.
Yes, there is a limit of 1,500 characters for each of the two input boxes. This means you need to be concise and use clear, direct language like bullet points to get the most out of the available space.
There’s no built-in "share" feature for custom instructions. The best way to share is to copy your template’s text into a shared document, like a Google Doc or Slack message, so your team members can paste it into their own settings.
It’s a good practice to review your template whenever you feel the AI’s responses are becoming less helpful or if your goals change. You might also update it when you start a new project or shift your focus to a different subject area.
The most common mistake is being too vague, for example, saying "act professional." A much better approach is to be specific about what that means, like "use a formal tone, avoid slang, and structure responses with clear headings."
Yes, your custom instructions are tied to your OpenAI account, not your device. Once you set them up on the web, they will automatically apply to all your conversations in the ChatGPT mobile app as well.
