One home per fact: stop your AI quoting last year’s returns policy
Key takeaways
- Keep each customer-facing fact in one place, and have the AI read it from there.
- Copies drift. The day your terms change, every copy you forgot about becomes a wrong answer.
- Tell the AI to say “I’ll check” when a fact isn’t in the file, rather than filling the gap from memory.
Short version: write each fact your customers ask about, such as your returns window, delivery cut-offs and opening hours, in one file. Point the AI at that file and nowhere else. When something changes, you change it once, and every answer changes with it.
How a fact ends up in five places
It happens without anyone deciding it should. You set up an AI assistant and paste your returns policy into its instructions. A month later you add a chat widget to the website, and paste the policy in there too. Then a template for marketplace messages. Then a help page. Then a note for the person who covers when you are on holiday.
Each copy was right on the day it was made. Each one was made by someone sensible. And now your returns policy lives in five places, and nobody has a list of them.
Copies drift
Say you sell garden planters online and decide to give customers longer to return things over Christmas. You update the help page. You might remember the chat widget. You probably won’t remember the instructions you pasted into the assistant in the spring.
So in January, a customer asks the AI how long they have. It answers confidently, politely and wrongly, from the old copy. The customer quotes it back at you. Now you either honour a policy you didn’t mean to offer, or argue with a customer about something your own system told them.
The AI didn’t make anything up. It did exactly what it was told. The problem was that it was told two different things, and the old one won.
One file the AI reads
The fix is dull, which is why it works. Make one file, one page or one document that holds the facts customers ask about. The AI reads from it every time it answers. Nothing else holds a copy.
What belongs in it:
- Returns and exchanges: the window, what condition items must be in, who pays to send them back, how to start one.
- Delivery: cut-off times for same-day dispatch, which couriers, where you deliver and where you don’t.
- Opening hours and contact routes: when a person is around, and how a customer reaches one.
- What you sell and don’t: so the AI doesn’t promise a size, colour or service you dropped last year.
- Seasonal changes: holiday closures and extended windows, each with the date it starts and the date it ends.
Write each fact as a plain sentence, the way you would tell a new member of staff. The AI doesn’t need clever formatting. It needs the right answer in one obvious place.
Instructions say how, the file says what
Keep the AI’s instructions for behaviour: be polite, keep replies short, hand over to a person when unsure, never promise a refund. Keep the facts out of them. If a fact appears in the instructions, it is a copy, and copies drift.
A good test: if you change your returns window tomorrow, how many places do you need to edit? The answer should be one. If it is more than one, find the others and replace them with a pointer to the file.
Make the AI say when it doesn’t know
A single source only helps if the AI sticks to it. Tell it plainly: answer policy questions only from the file, and if the answer isn’t there, say you’ll check and pass the question to a person.
That gap is useful. Every “I’ll check” is a question your customers ask that your file doesn’t answer. Read them once a week and add the missing facts. The file gets better from real questions, not from guessing what people might ask.
Check it after every change
When you edit the file, ask the AI the question the change affects, as a customer would, and read the answer. It takes a minute. It is the only way to know the AI is reading the file you think it is, and not an older one cached somewhere.
Keep a short list of these questions, one for each fact. After any bigger change, run through the lot.
Keeping the file honest
- One owner. A named person who updates it, so changes don’t depend on whoever remembers.
- A date on each section. When it was last checked, so stale facts are easy to spot.
- Change it first. When a policy changes, update the file before you announce it anywhere else.
- Link, don’t paste. Help pages and templates should point to the file, or be built from it, rather than repeat it.
This is one of the ground rules in act, draft or never, and it is the cheapest one to put in place. Want to see where AI could save your business time? Grafto’s AI Tools Report works it out from a short questionnaire.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my AI chatbot give out-of-date answers?
Usually because it is reading an old copy of a fact, pasted into its instructions or a help page that was never updated. Keep each fact in one file the AI reads, and delete the copies.
Should I put my policies in the AI’s instructions?
Keep the instructions for how the AI behaves, and keep facts such as your returns window and delivery cut-offs in a separate file it reads. That way a change only needs making in one place.
What should the AI do if a fact isn’t in the file?
Say it will check and pass the question to a person, rather than guessing. Review those questions each week and add the missing answers to the file.
Questions, or want a tool we don't have yet? Email hello@grafto.co.uk — a real person replies.