Iryna Skoryk, Grow2.ai's tone editor, runs a Day 5–6 workshop on every pilot. The output is a 4-to-7-page tone document, one per language the agent will speak, written with the client's actual front-desk lead. This note shows what one of those documents looks like and the three first-draft mistakes that show up on every project.
Why per-language, not just per-brand
A Polish guest at Atlas Rentals expects formal address ("państwo", conditional verbs); a Ukrainian guest expects warm directness (active voice, second-person singular "ти" if under 35, "Ви" otherwise); an Italian guest expects context-rich greetings, even at 03:00 reporting a broken kettle. A single "brand voice" document cannot encode all three without becoming uselessly abstract.
The structure of the document
- One paragraph: who are we talking to? Demographic specifics, urgency profile, what they're typically holding when they read the message (phone in airport, laptop at desk, dental chair).
- Three example exchanges: ideal greeting, ideal apology, ideal escalation refusal. Written by the front-desk lead first, then edited by Iryna for AI-friendliness.
- Five "never say" phrases. Real examples from drafts that got vetoed. ("Як справи?" from the agent in UA — patients found it weird.)
- Address rules: formal/informal, naming conventions, when to use the agent's name vs. the brand name.
- Time-of-day modifiers: what the 02:14 reply sounds like vs. the 14:02 reply.
The three things that always go wrong on the first draft
Grow2.ai has now written tone documents for thirty-one pilots. The same three issues appear in the first draft of nearly every one:
- Em-dash overuse. The default Claude/GPT tone leans on em-dashes — they sound thoughtful in English but read as "trying too hard" in Polish, German and Ukrainian. We strip them out by hand in the prompt.
- Apologies that don't apologise. "I understand your frustration, however…" is a textbook AI apology. It contains the word "however", which signals to the reader that what follows is a deflection. The replacement: "You're right that this should've worked. Here's what I'm doing about it now."
- Wrong register on first contact. Atlas's guest is on holiday; the agent should not open with formal "Dear Sir or Madam". Clinica Via's patient is anxious; the agent should not open casually. The first line of the system prompt encodes register explicitly.