Tone sets how your AI Agent sounds across a whole conversation. Greeting and Sign-off control the two moments guests notice most: the first line and the last.
Both are optional. Leave them empty and the agent opens and closes in whatever way its tone suggests.
Where they are
Both fields sit on the General tab of the AI Agent, below the assignment rule.
Field | What the platform says | Example placeholder |
Greeting | Optionally instruct how your bot opens a conversation. | Greet the guest warmly by name and ask how you can help. |
Sign-off | Optionally instruct how your bot closes a conversation. | Close the message warmly and thank the guest for reaching out. |
When each one fires
This is the part worth understanding, because neither applies to every message.
The greeting fires on the agent's first message of an engagement. The agent's opening reply carries it; the replies after that do not. A guest who asks three questions in a row is greeted once, at the top, and then simply answered.
It fires again if the agent re-engages after stepping away. If the agent left the conversation to a colleague, or marked the ticket solved, and the guest then asks something new that the agent can handle, the greeting appears on that reply too. Treated as an opening, that is the right behaviour — but it does mean a long conversation that goes back and forth between the agent and your team can carry the greeting more than once.
The sign-off fires when the agent closes the conversation. It appears on the message where the agent marks the ticket solved, and nowhere else. If the agent leaves the conversation to a human rather than solving it, the sign-off does not appear at all — a handover is not a close.
They are instructions, not scripts
You are not writing the words the agent will say. You are telling it what to do.
Write "Greet the guest by first name and mention the property name", not "Hello Anna, welcome to the Grand Hotel!". The agent takes the instruction and writes the line, in its own tone, in the guest's language. An instruction adapts; a fixed script does not.
Good instructions are short and describe behaviour:
Greet the guest by name and ask how you can help.
Open by thanking them for choosing us, then answer the question directly.
Close by inviting them to message again if anything else comes up.
Sign off with the reception's opening hours.
Phrase them as behaviour, never as words to repeat. An instruction written as a command about exact wording — anything of the form "always say the following words" — risks the instruction itself being sent to the guest rather than acted on. Describe the effect you want and let the agent write the line.
How they work with tone
Tone is the voice; the greeting and sign-off are two specific things you have asked that voice to do.
A Formal agent told to "greet the guest warmly by name" will still be formal — it will just be a formal greeting that uses the guest's name. If the result reads wrong, change the tone first and the instructions second. See Naming your AI Agent and setting tone.
If your brand voice is more distinctive than Neutral, Casual or Formal can carry, these two fields are where a little of it can live. Use them sparingly. Instructions that try to encode a whole brand personality tend to produce agents that sound like they are performing.
What to avoid
Facts. Do not put opening hours, prices or policies in the greeting. Those belong in the agent's knowledge, where they can be updated in one place and used only when relevant. See How the AI Agent learns.
A long instruction. These fields shape one line each. Anything beyond a sentence or two competes with the tone setting rather than adding to it.
Assuming the guest's name is available. A greeting that uses the guest's name only works when the agent knows it. Test it in the Preview panel with Guest profile context switched on and a guest selected, not on an anonymous conversation.
Testing before you activate
Both fields are draft changes until you click Activate, so test them first.
Open the Preview panel from the icon at the right of the tab strip and send the agent a question. Read the reply end to end: the greeting should be on that first reply and nowhere after it. Then send a closing message — something like "that's everything, thanks" — and check the sign-off appears on the message where the ticket is marked solved.
Switch on Guest profile context, search for a guest and select one, to see how the greeting reads when the agent knows who it is talking to. Only guests who already have a master profile appear in that search, which is the same set the agent recognises in production. See Testing Your AI Agent with the Preview Panel.
Need Help?
Please contact us through the 'Talk to Us' option on the left menu in the platform, or through the Bookboost Support email at support@bookboost.io if you have questions or need additional support.