Ever feel like you’re talking to a wall when you use an AI? You ask a simple question and get a response that’s generic, slightly off-topic, or just plain weird. It’s frustrating, especially when you know the AI should be able to do better. The secret usually isn’t the AI model itself, but how you ask.
This is the whole idea behind prompt engineering, and the good news is you don’t need an engineering degree to get it right. A prompt improver is basically a tool or a technique that helps you turn a simple request into a detailed instruction that an AI can actually understand and follow.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to use a prompt improver to get consistently better results. We’ll also look at how these same ideas apply in specific situations, like customer support, where getting the right answer is a pretty big deal.
What you’ll need to get started with a prompt improver
Before diving in, it helps to have a few things ready. A little bit of prep work can make a huge difference in the quality of the AI’s output.
Here’s a quick checklist:
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An initial prompt: This is just your starting idea. It can be a single sentence about what you want the AI to do. Don’t worry about making it perfect, just write down the basic concept.
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A clear goal: You need to know what a "good" response looks like. Are you aiming for a specific format, a certain tone, or a particular level of detail? Having a target helps you know when you’ve hit the mark.
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(Optional) Examples of good and bad outputs: If you have them, examples are gold. They’re the clearest way to show an AI exactly what you want (and what to avoid).
A step-by-step guide to using a prompt improver
Let’s break down how you actually refine a prompt. We’ll borrow the concepts from tools like Anthropic’s prompt improver and walk through a real-world example.
Step 1: Write your initial prompt
First, just get your initial thought down. It doesn’t need to be polished. The goal here is simply to capture the main task you want the AI to perform.
Let’s say you’re on a support team and need a template for a common question. Your first attempt at a prompt might be as basic as this:
"Tell the customer how to reset their password."
That’s it. It’s a fine starting point. It’s direct, but it also leaves a lot up to the AI’s interpretation, which can lead to answers that are all over the place.
Step 2: Use a prompt improver to build a better version
Now it’s time to beef up that simple instruction. A prompt improver tool takes your basic request and applies some best practices to make it much more specific. If you were using a public tool, you’d just paste your prompt in. If you’re building this into a workflow, you’d apply these principles yourself.
Here are the key things these tools do to improve a prompt:
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Adding a persona: Tell the AI who it should be. For example, telling it to "Act as a helpful and friendly customer support agent" immediately sets the right tone and style.
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Providing step-by-step instructions: Don’t just assume the AI knows how to structure the answer. Break the task down into a logical sequence for it to follow.
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Using clear formatting: Simple formatting, like using XML tags (
<example>and</example>), helps the AI tell the difference between instructions and examples in your prompt. -
Including examples (few-shot prompting): This is probably the most effective technique. By giving the AI a couple of examples of inputs and ideal outputs, you’re showing, not just telling, it what you want.
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Specifying the output format: Be explicit. If you want a numbered list, ask for one. If you only want a specific piece of information, tell it to only provide that.
Let’s see how our simple password reset prompt changes after applying these ideas:
Before:
Tell the customer how to reset their password.
After:
"`
You are a friendly and precise customer support assistant. Your goal is to provide clear, step-by-step instructions that are easy for anyone to follow.
A customer has asked for help resetting their password. Follow these steps to generate your response:
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Greet the customer warmly.
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Provide a numbered list of instructions for how to reset their password.
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End the message by asking if they need any more help.
Generate the response now.
"`
The second prompt is so much clearer. It removes the guesswork and gives the AI a solid recipe to follow.
Step 3: Analyze the prompt changes and refine further
Take a second to look at the improved prompt. Why is it better? It really boils down to giving the AI structure, clarity, and context. By providing all three, you drastically lower the chances of the AI misunderstanding you or giving a lazy, unhelpful answer.
This structured method also nudges the AI toward what’s called "chain-of-thought" reasoning. By asking the AI to follow a series of steps, you’re encouraging it to "think" through the problem before spitting out the final answer. For more complicated tasks, this simple trick can make a huge difference in accuracy.
Now, you can fine-tune it even more. The improved prompt is a great starting point, but you should always tweak it to fit your exact needs. For our password reset example, you might add a line about your company’s specific password policy or adjust the tone to be more formal or casual to match your brand’s voice.
Step 4: Test your improved prompt
An improved prompt is only good if it works consistently. Once you have a version you like, you have to test it.
Run the prompt a few times. Try feeding it slightly different versions of the user’s question to see how it handles the variations. Does it still follow your instructions? Is the quality of the output always good?
This is where generic, standalone tools can fall short. You can test a prompt, but you’re doing it in a bubble. You have no idea how it would perform against thousands of real customer questions or whether it could use your company’s knowledge to answer them. For that, you need a tool that’s built into your actual workflow.
Use an integrated prompt improver for customer support
While the steps above are great for everyday tasks, customer support is a different ballgame. A bad response isn’t just a minor issue; it can really damage a customer relationship. Generic prompt improvers don’t have the business context or the testing tools to be truly effective and safe for that kind of work.
The advantage of a context-aware prompt improver
This is where a platform like eesel AI really shines. Instead of just giving you a text box, you get a full prompt editor that’s already connected to your business knowledge and workflows. It’s built to make prompt improvement easy, effective, and safe.
Here are a few of the advantages:
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Built-in knowledge: Your prompts are grounded in your company’s reality. The AI isn’t just guessing; it’s using your actual help center articles, past ticket resolutions from tools like Zendesk or Freshdesk, and internal documents from Confluence or Google Docs to figure out its answers.
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Total control over persona and actions: With the eesel AI prompt editor, you can define not only the AI’s tone but also the specific actions it can take. This is way more than just generating text. You can tell the AI to escalate a ticket to a particular team, add a tag, merge tickets, or even look up live order information from Shopify by making an API call.
- Risk-free testing with simulation mode: This is a huge one. Instead of testing your prompt a handful of times by hand, eesel AI’s simulation mode lets you test it against thousands of your actual past customer tickets. You get a clear forecast of how your new prompt will perform and its resolution rate, which lets you find and fix any problems before it ever goes live with a real customer.
A better workflow for support prompts using a prompt improver
The difference in the process is what really sets an integrated solution apart from a generic tool.
| Feature | Generic Prompt Improver | eesel AI’s Integrated Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Context | None. It works in a complete vacuum. | Learns directly from your past tickets, docs, and help center. |
| Actions | Generates text only. | Can generate text AND take actions (tag, triage, API calls). |
| Testing | Manual, one-off tests with no real data. | Automated simulation on thousands of your real past tickets. |
| Setup | Requires constant copying and pasting between tools. | All-in-one dashboard. You can go live in minutes. |
| Goal | Create a better prompt. | Create a better prompt that automates real work, safely. |
Better prompts lead to better business outcomes
Crafting a good prompt is all about being specific, structured, and providing clear context. It’s the difference between getting a genuinely helpful answer and a frustrating dead end.
While standalone prompt improver tools are a great way to learn the ropes, the real value for a business comes from building these principles directly into your daily workflows. For anyone in a customer-facing role, that means using a tool that doesn’t just help you write better prompts, but also connects those prompts to your business knowledge and lets you test their real-world impact safely and accurately.
Here's a video that will help you improve your prompts.
A smarter way to engineer better prompts
Ready to move beyond generic tools and start building AI agents with prompts you can actually rely on? Sign up for eesel AI and see how easy it is to create, test, and deploy AI that’s perfectly tuned to your business. You can get up and running in minutes, not months.
Frequently asked questions
It’s useful for both. For simple tasks, it ensures consistency and the right tone, which is critical in customer support. For complex tasks, it provides the necessary structure and context to guide the AI toward an accurate and well-formatted answer.
It’s both. You can apply the principles of prompt improvement yourself, like adding personas and examples to your instructions. However, dedicated tools can automate this process and, in a business context, add crucial features like data integration and safe testing.
A generic tool can’t handle this, which is why an integrated one is better for business use. A platform like eesel AI connects directly to your knowledge base, so when you update your help docs, the AI’s responses are automatically updated too.
Yes, absolutely. By providing clear constraints, step-by-step instructions, and grounding the AI in your specific company knowledge, you significantly reduce its freedom to invent information. It gives the AI a clear "recipe" to follow instead of letting it guess.
The model’s core capabilities still matter, but a great prompt is often the most important factor. A well-crafted prompt can get a much better result from an average model than a vague prompt can from a top-tier one, making it the highest-leverage way to improve AI performance.
