How Doug learns your business
Also called Training Doug, Doug's sources, AI agent training data.
How Doug learns your business is simple: he reads the material you give him, which is your website, PDFs and documents you upload, text you paste, and Q&A pairs you write. He answers customers only from that material and shows where each answer came from. When it doesn't cover a question, he says so and offers to get a person.
Doug's Field Guide · Updated
What Doug reads
Everything Doug knows about your business comes from sources. There are four kinds, and most businesses use all of them within the first week.
Your website is the starting point. Paste the address and he reads the pages on it, the same way a new hire would click through your site on day one. Set the site to recrawl and he reads it again on a schedule, so when you change a price or add a service, his answers move with it.
Files cover what isn't on the site. Warranty terms, a price sheet, a service area map written out as text, the onboarding packet you give new staff. Upload the PDF and he reads it.
Pasted text is for anything you'd otherwise explain out loud: how your crew handles gate codes, what you do when it rains, which brands you won't install.
Q&A pairs are for the answers he has to get exactly right. You write the question and the answer word for word. Refund policy, emergency fees, whether you need a deposit. When a customer asks one of these, the answer you wrote is what he works from.
How he answers from it
When a customer asks a question, Doug searches your sources for the parts that answer it and writes a reply from those parts only. Every answer shows where it came from, so you can check his work.
He doesn't fill gaps with guesses. If your material doesn't cover what the customer asked, he tells them he isn't sure and offers to get a person on it. That's the honest answer, and it keeps a wrong quote off your phone.
Each question he couldn't answer lands in your dashboard with an answer already drafted from what he does know. You read it, fix anything that's off, and approve it. From then on he gets that question right. Most businesses close the big gaps in the first two weeks this way, because customers tend to ask the same twenty things.
Your sources and conversations belong to you. They aren't sold and aren't used to train models, and deleting a source removes it from what he knows.
Train Doug in one sitting
- Paste your website address and let him read it.
- Upload the one PDF customers ask about most, like your warranty or price sheet.
- Write Q&A pairs for your refund policy, emergency fee, and deposit rules.
- Ask him your ten most common customer questions in the test chat and read every answer.
- Approve or correct the drafted answers for anything he missed.
Common mistakes
- Relying on the website alone when your real prices and policies live in a PDF or in your head.
- Writing Q&A pairs in vague language, which gives Doug nothing firm to quote back to a customer.
- Ignoring the missed questions list for the first few weeks, when it closes the most gaps for the least work.
How Doug does it
Paste your website and Doug reads it in minutes, then you test him in a chat before he goes live. Add files, pasted text, and Q&A pairs any time, and set your site to recrawl so his answers stay current. Every question he misses comes back with a drafted answer for you to approve.
Terms on this page
- Q&A pairs
- A question and answer you write word for word, for the things Doug has to get exactly right, like refunds or emergency fees.
- Recrawl
- Doug reading your website again on a schedule, so his answers change when your pages do.
- Sources
- The material Doug learns your business from: your website, uploaded files, pasted text, and Q&A pairs. He answers customers only from his sources.
Keep exploring
- FAQ pagesThe questions customers ask on the phone, each with one short, clear answer.
- AI receptionistSoftware that answers customers, takes their details and books them, day or night.
- Human handoffWhen an AI agent passes the conversation to a real person on your team.
- The weekly visibility checkEach week he asks the assistants your customers' questions and counts your mentions.
Sources
Written by Doug's team from these sources and our own work with local businesses. Search engines change their rules, so check the source before a big decision.
