What to upload
- Price lists and rate cards, if you are happy for them to be quoted
- Delivery, returns and warranty policies
- Product specifications and compatibility information
- Service descriptions with real detail
- Common process explanations — how ordering works, what happens after booking
What not to upload
- Anything internal — margins, supplier terms, staff information
- Superseded versions of anything current
- Documents you have not read recently enough to vouch for
- Anything containing personal data about customers
The bot can only answer from what it has. Uploading an old price list means it will quote old prices confidently, which is worse than not answering.
Prepare them lightly
- Real text rather than scanned images, wherever possible
- Clear headings, so passages stand alone when retrieved
- A date or version marker in the document itself
- One topic per document, rather than a fifty-page everything file
Prices need a decision
Publishing prices to a chatbot is publishing them. That is often the right choice — it filters enquiries and it is what visitors want — but it should be deliberate.
If prices vary by circumstance, upload the structure and the ranges, and have the bot capture the details a quote would need.
Keep them current
A document uploaded once is a document that will be wrong eventually. Put a reminder against anything that changes, particularly prices and policies.
Replacing an uploaded document is quick; noticing that it needs replacing is the part that needs a process.