Fix the triage prompt
Fix the triage prompt
Your support inbox takes 200+ messages a day. A teammate drafted a prompt for the AI assistant that sorts them — it works, but the results are different on every run and cannot be explained to anyone.
Rewrite the weak prompt so the sorting is a rulebook: categories, priority criteria, an unclear bucket and a fixed output shape. Then compare with a strong version.
The weak prompt
Sort these customer messages by importance and tell me what to do first.
A strong version (self-assessment — not machine-graded)
Sort these customer messages into exactly these categories: Billing, Technical, Shipping, Account access, Other. If a message fits more than one category, place it by the most severe issue and note the second category. Rank the messages within each category by this priority order: (1) safety risks, (2) money lost today — charges, double billing, (3) blocked work, (4) everything else. If a message does not clearly fit — or fits none — put it under 'Needs human review' instead of guessing. Output one list per category. For each message: one line with its position and a five-word reason. Use only what the messages say; do not invent details. Messages: [paste messages]
Hint
What does 'importance' mean to five different people?
Where should an ambiguous message go, so it is not lost?
Why this is the answer
The weak prompt hands the model a feeling and hopes for consistency. The rewrite replaces the feeling with a rulebook: named categories with edges, a ranked priority order, an explicit bucket for unclear cases, and an output shape with a five-word reason per message — so any row can be audited at a glance and the hard cases stay visible.