I Asked a Bot to Sort Ten Customer Messages, and Nine Landed in the Same Folder
Yesterday afternoon I asked our team bot, Robo, to sort ten customer inquiries into three categories, shipping, sizing, and payment. It sounded like a five minute task. When I opened the result, nine out of ten had piled into 「Other」.
At first I assumed Robo was slacking. Rereading the prompt told a different story. I had only given category names, no example sentences at all. The bot had nothing to judge a shipping inquiry against.
The fix was simple. I added one or two real example lines next to each category, something like 「when will my order arrive」 placed under shipping. Ran it again, and all nine found their proper home.
Here is how a non-developer can try this.
1. Pick three or four categories inside Claude Code.
2. Attach one or two real example sentences to each category in the prompt.
3. Test first on a sample of ten messages.
4. If results skew toward one folder, add more examples there.
I did not expect one example sentence to make that much difference. Rather than telling a bot to 「just figure it out」, handing it a few anchor sentences turns out to be the faster path every time.