Training your Charlie AI agent is simple and straightforward! This guide will help you build a robust, accurate Knowledge Base so Charlie can answer patient questions perfectly and support your front-desk team with ease.
✨ When You Need This Guide:
You will find this guide incredibly helpful if you are:
Setting up your Charlie AI agent for the very first time.
Refining and improving Charlie's answers to patients.
Teaching Charlie to sound like a warm extension of your front desk.
Wanting to ensure Charlie pronounces your doctors' names correctly.
What This Covers (And What It Doesn't):
✅ Covers: How to organize and upload your Training Questions, Articles, Documents, and Website links into ALOHA®, plus helpful examples.
❌ Doesn't Cover: Configuring your phone system routing tiers or setting up your telephone forwarding rules.
Prerequisites/You'll Need:
Access to your ALOHA account.
Access to your practice's current FAQs, intake forms, pricing sheets, and policies.
🗺️ Where to Find Your Charlie Training Tools
🗺️ Where to Find Your Charlie Training Tools
All of your training tools live inside your ALOHA dashboard. Here is your quick navigation map:
Business Hours: Found under Settings > Calendar > Working Hours. Update your hours here so Charlie can quote them accurately.
Appointments: Found under Settings > Charlie AI > Appointments. Choose which appointment types Charlie is allowed to book.
Knowledge Base: Found under Agents > Knowledge Base. Your main content hub containing Articles, Documents, Training Questions, and Websites.
Guidance: Found under Agents > Guidance. Set your practice's unique communication style rules and guidelines.
Pronunciations: Found under Agents > Pronunciations. Add phonetic spellings for tricky provider and insurance names.
Agent List Tab: Found under Agents > Agent List. Manage your agent's overall status and update connected content items.
Test Simulator: Found under Agents > Test. Access the live simulator to test your changes instantly.
✅ Step-by-Step Training Instructions
To achieve the highest answer quality, remember to load your practice information into the Knowledge Base in a specific order of priority.
Step 1: Align Your Settings First (Highest Priority Overall)
Charlie references your core configurations first for business hours. Do not teach Charlie your hours in the Knowledge Base. Update your Working Hours in Aloha to ensure she quotes them perfectly.
Enable the exact appointment types Charlie is allowed to book under the Appointments tab in the Aloha Settings page.
Step 2: Add High-Priority Training Questions
These are your most powerful tool because Charlie looks at them before any other Knowledge Base content. Aim for at least 12 questions across categories like:
New-Patient Flow: State if you welcome new patients, what items to bring, your cancellation parameters, and set visit lengths.
Insurance & Cost: List in-network carriers and exact cash rates so patients know costs upfront.
Services & Conditions: Train Charlie on both symptoms and services so she catches what patients call about (e.g., dry needling and sciatica).
Step 3: Write Narrative Articles
These are best for short, conversational descriptions written in your practice's voice. Draft simple paragraphs covering:
Service and modality descriptions.
Clear parking and location instructions.
What a patient can expect during their first visit.
Step 4: Upload Reference Documents
For formal reference information, upload original files directly. Upload PDFs or documents of your:
New-patient intake forms.
Written cancellation and no-show policies.
HIPAA notice or privacy policy.
Step 5: Configure Your Website Fallback
ALOHA can crawl your website as an auto-imported safety net. Enter a title, your website URL, and sync frequency. Charlie only uses this when no other source matches.
Step 6: Define Guidance & Tricky Pronunciations
Use Pronunciations and Guidance to ensure Charlie sounds and treats patients like an extended part of your office.
Communication Style & Rules: Set your agent's unique behavior rules and core personality under Guidance.
Example style: "Warm and welcoming, professional but conversational". Example rule: "If a caller mentions a car accident, confirm we handle personal injury cases and ask for attorney info".
Pronunciations: Add custom phonetic guidelines under Pronunciations so Charlie sounds seamless.
Example provider: For "Dr. Benoit", type "Doctor Ben-wah".
Example carrier: For "Aetna", type "Et-nuh".
Step 7: Double-Check Your Statuses
Before finishing, look at your lists in your Knowledge Base and verify that every item is toggled to Active. Items left as "Inactive" are completely skipped during patient calls.
Step 8: Connect Your Content to the Agent
Once your training content is saved and set to Active, go to Agents > Agent List. Click on your specific agent to open the settings window. Under Knowledge Base Content and Agent Rules, click the dropdown menu to select and link the new training items you just created. Once your content items are selected, click Update Agent to finalize the sync.
🛠️ Three Ways to Build Training Questions Instantly
You don't have to write everything from scratch! You have three different, instant methods to train Charlie and perfect her responses:
1. Manual Creation (In the Knowledge Base Tab)
How it works: Go to Agents > Knowledge Base > + New > + Training Questions.
When to use it: Use this during your initial setup to plug in your core 12 baseline questions (Pricing, Intake, and Services) before going live.
2. Interactive Simulation (In the Test Tab)
How it works: Go to Agents > Test to chat directly with Charlie.
Instant Edit: Type in typical patient questions. If a response isn't quite right, click Optimize to open a text box. Type exactly what you want Charlie to say, and save it as an instant Training Question.
3. Real Call Review (In the Reports Menu)
How it works: Go to Reports > Charlie AI Log to review actual historical conversations between Charlie and your callers.
Instant Edit: Click directly on any agent response that could use improvement. This opens the training text box where you can type in exactly what her response should have been and instantly save it to her library.
💡 Common Questions
What You Might Notice | Why It's Happening | What to Do |
Charlie is bypassing a newly written article or FAQ. | The item may still be saved as a "Inactive". | Look under Agents > Knowledge Base and change the status to Active to make it live. |
Charlie mispronounces a provider name or a carrier name. | Charlie needs the phonetic pronunciation. | Go to Agents > Pronunciations and add a phonetic spelling entry. |
Charlie gives a general answer instead of the office-specific information for a service. | The information is in an Article or Website crawl without the precise information. | Go to Agents > Knowledge Base, click Training Questions, and add the exact QA pair there. |
Charlie transferred a call for a rescheduling request. | The rescheduling toggle needs to be turned on, and there needs to be appointments set up for rescheduling. | Go to Settings → Charlie AI > Configuration in ALOHA and ensure "Allow appointment rescheduling" is enabled. |
🎉 You'll Know It's Working When
Your front desk team notices a massive drop in ringing phones, allowing them to focus entirely on patients standing right in front of them.
Charlie books appointments that you've enabled, keeping your calendar full.
Your front desk staff stops spending hours repeating the same answers about parking, hours, and cancellation rules.
💬 Need Help? We're Here!
Our support team is always happy to look over your training setup and ensure everything is fully optimized!
📞 Phone Support: 800-563-0469
✉️ Email Support: support@getaloha.com