Write the first message
The exact line it opens with. It shapes the conversation more than the instruction does, because it decides what people ask next.
The first message is not a greeting. It is a scope statement — the one chance you have to tell somebody what this conversation can achieve before they ask for something it cannot.
Get it wrong and you generate the questions your bot is worst at. "How can I help you today?" is an open invitation to ask about anything, including the six things you explicitly told it to refuse.
Steps
Find it above the instruction in the Identity card
It is the exact text sent when a conversation begins — not a template or a suggestion, the literal message.
It sits above the instruction in the Identity card, which is the right order: what it says first matters more than how it behaves afterwards, because it determines what people ask.
Name what it can do
Naming two or three things it can do beats an open greeting every time, because it draws the boundary before the customer crosses it.
Keep it to one or two lines
On WhatsApp a long opener reads as an advert. On a voice call it is worse — people interrupt, and then the agent is recovering from the very first exchange.
Signal that a person is available
"Ask for a human any time." This removes the anxiety that makes people hostile to bots, and in practice costs very few handovers — most people carry on once they know they can escape.
Match it to where the bot is actually used
One bot serves many channels, so the opener has to make sense on all of them. If it genuinely needs to differ between a support widget and a sales WhatsApp line, that is a reason to have two bots rather than one vague opener.
Read it aloud for a call bot
This is the first thing every caller hears. Contractions, short clauses and a real question at the end all work better spoken than written.
Check it worked
Start a conversation as a stranger with no context. If the opener leaves you unsure what to ask, rewrite it. That confusion is what every one of your customers experiences.
The parts people get wrong
- A QR code scan opens a chat and sends nothing. Your first message is all the customer sees, with no context at all.
- On voice, the first message sets the pace for the whole call. Short openers get short answers, which is usually what you want.