Customizing Your AI Agent's Behavior with Coaching Instructions

Last updated: August 14, 2026

Your Maple AI agent can be customized far beyond what's in your menu and Knowledge Base — from exact wording during order confirmation, to proactively mentioning a promotion, to how it handles a specific edge case your restaurant runs into. This article explains the two ways your agent's behavior is configured, and how to request a change.

Two Ways Your AI Agent "Knows" Things

Maple's AI agent draws on two different kinds of configuration, and it's helpful to understand the difference:

  • Knowledge Base entries — Question-and-answer pairs and general restaurant information you add in the Maple portal. These are retrieved only when relevant — for example, the AI only mentions your corkage fee if a customer asks about it.

  • Coaching instructions — Standing rules that apply to every call, regardless of what the customer asks. These control things like exactly how the AI confirms an order out loud, what it says at the end of a call, or how it should handle a specific recurring situation.

Knowledge Base entries are great for FAQs. Coaching instructions are what you want when you need the AI to consistently say or do something a specific way, every time.

What You Can Customize with Coaching Instructions

Common examples merchants ask for include:

  • Order confirmation wording — a specific script or phrase the AI should use when reading back and confirming an order.

  • Greeting customization — beyond the basic greeting text, tone or additional details you want mentioned every time a call starts.

  • Promotion mentions — having the AI proactively bring up a current deal or discount instead of waiting for the customer to ask.

  • Pronunciation fixes — correcting how the AI says your restaurant's name or a specific menu item.

  • Transfer wording and conditions — customizing what the AI says before transferring, or under what circumstances it should transfer instead of handling something itself.

How to Request a Change

  1. Contact your onboarding specialist or the Maple support team.

  2. Describe what you want in plain language — for example, "when the AI confirms an order, I want it to also say our total prep time is 20 minutes" or "always mention our lunch special between 11 AM and 2 PM."

  3. The Maple team will configure the instruction on the backend. Most changes take effect quickly and don't require any engineering work.

  4. Test it with a call to your AI number to confirm it's working the way you expect.

Instructions can be turned off, edited, or replaced at any time — just let Maple support know.

A Note on Keeping Instructions Simple

Each coaching instruction should be narrowly scoped to one specific behavior. Piling on multiple overlapping instructions (for example, several different rules about what to say at the end of a call) can occasionally cause the AI to repeat itself or blend instructions together in a confusing way.

If you have several customizations in mind, it's a good idea to add them one at a time and test after each one — and if you notice the AI repeating itself, let Maple support know so the instructions can be reviewed and consolidated.

Also remember: if you add a time-limited instruction (like mentioning a promotion that ends on a certain date), ask Maple support to remove it once it's no longer relevant — otherwise the AI may keep mentioning an expired deal.