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Build Your Voice Dial

Week 2Weekly Upgrade

  • 25–35 minGuided walkthrough

Adapt your Communication Style Guide for one audience you write for. These named audience styles make up your Voice Dial. You’ll test one short message, then save your complete updated guide and a reusable builder for adding another audience.

What You Need for This Guide

  • Your complete current My Communication Style Guide.
  • One audience you write for, or a rough description to narrow down.
  • A short work message, or the practice facts in step 3.

If you still need your starting file, Build Your Communication Style Guide walks you through it.

Choose the tool you’re allowed to use

Your approved tool

The tool your company approved.

Pick your approved tool above to see the steps and screenshots for it.

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4 steps · At your own pace
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Standard Data rules for AI at work

Data Rules

Data rules for AI at work

Check with your IT Team before you paste any work data into an AI tool. Avoid names, account numbers, customer data, or anything sensitive without explicit permission from IT. If you aren't sure, redact anything sensitive and replace it with generic information. AI makes mistakes, make sure to fact check your agents outputs even if they sound right.

Before you start

  • Check with your IT teamAsk what your company allows before you put anything from work into an AI tool. Your company policy is the one that counts, and it is the one this library cannot see.
  • Use the tool your company approvedChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Gemini are all covered here. Use the one your company approved, not the one you like best.
  • Sign in with your work accountA work account keeps your chats inside the agreement your company signed. A personal account in the same product sits outside it.
  • No approved account yetFollow the steps with made-up example text, or on paper, until IT gives you one.

Never put this into an AI tool

  • Customer or personal detailsNo names, email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses or account numbers. That covers colleagues as well as customers.
  • Regulated recordsHealth, financial, HR and legal records stay in the systems built to hold them, unless IT has told you in writing that this tool may see them.
  • Passwords, keys and access codesNo credentials of any kind, yours or anyone else’s, and nothing that grants access to a system.
  • Anything under an NDA or not yet publicUnreleased plans, contracts, pricing and source code need clearance before they go near a chat window.
  • Anything your company policy prohibitsYour company’s rules win over anything in this library. If policy keeps something out of AI tools, it stays out, whatever a guide suggests.

Do this instead

  • Swap real details for placeholdersWrite “Customer A”, “[client name]”, “$X”. You get the same quality of answer, and you put the real details back yourself.
  • Describe the situation rather than pasting the documentMost of what an agent needs is the shape of the problem, not the file it arrived in.
  • Trim a file before you upload or paste itTake out the identifying columns and pages first, or work from a short extract.

Check the answer before you use it

  • Read it as if a colleague had drafted itAn agent states wrong things with complete confidence. Your name goes on the work, so the check is yours.
  • Say where the agent helpedFollow your company rule on disclosing AI assistance, especially in client-facing or formal work.

When you are not sure

  • Ask before you paste or upload, not afterA question to your IT team takes a minute. Cleaning up after a data incident takes a great deal longer.
  • When in doubt, leave it outIf you would not put it in an email to someone outside the company, keep it out of the chat.

On this guide

  • Testing or using an audience styleAn audience style changes how a message is expressed. It does not authorize new facts, promises or commitments, or replace your review of whether the message fits the situation.
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Step

Choose one audience and start the interview

  1. Open a new chat and attach your saved My Communication Style Guide, or paste its full text. Keep your original file unchanged so you can compare it at the end. If you haven’t made one, Build Your Communication Style Guide walks you through it.

  2. Pick one audience you write to often and write differently for, such as your director, clients or residents. You can add more later with the same prompt. If you can’t decide, write “help me choose” in the prompt.

  3. Copy Build my style for one audience into the chat, fill in the audience and send it. The agent should read your guide, ask its first question and wait for your answer. If it says it can’t read your file, paste the full text instead.

    Interview me for my Voice Dial
    You have my Communication Style Guide in this conversation. Treat its rules as my default way of writing.

Interview me to add a Voice Dial to it: a few named settings that tell you how to adjust my default style for a particular situation and reader. Do not change my existing rules.

First, show me these five starting settings as a short list:
Routine: normal tone, standard detail
Executive: shorter, more direct, focused on decisions and outcomes
Sensitive: calmer, more careful, less blunt
Urgent: concise and clear, with obvious next steps
Customer-facing: polished, reassuring and aware of the reader

Then ask question 1: which situations and readers I actually write for. Help me keep only the settings my work needs, and rename or add settings where that helps.

For each setting I keep, ask what it looks like on the page for the readers I use it with: length, opening, amount of background, how directly I ask, and greeting and closing. A label such as "formal" can mean something different to a senior leader, my manager, a colleague and a client, so ask how the setting changes by reader where that matters. If I answer with an adjective, ask for the visible choice behind it. Offer two short options when I am unsure.

Ask one question at a time and number them. Wait for my answer. Never send a list of questions. I may type or use dictation. Aim for about eight questions. If the settings I keep need more, say so after question 1 and keep going until every setting I keep is defined.

Before each new question, recap in one or two sentences how you would write my last answer into the Voice Dial, so I can correct it.

I will describe readers by role. Do not ask for the details of a real difficult case. A general description of the situation is enough.

Do not invent preferences I have not stated. A setting changes how a message is written, never its facts, dates or commitments.

When every setting I keep is defined, return a section titled My Voice Dial as plain text I can copy. For each setting, give when I use it, what it looks like, and how it changes by reader. Then give me this line to add to How I Want My AI Agent to Use This Guide: "When I name a setting from My Voice Dial, apply it on top of my default rules, and follow the setting where the two differ. When I do not name one, use my default rules and suggest a setting if the situation seems to call for one." Then list any Audience or situation differences note in my guide that may conflict with a setting, quoting each note beside the setting it names, so I can decide. Do not rewrite the rest of my guide. No preamble.

Start by showing the settings and asking question 1.

Step

Answer the interview questions

The agent asks around four questions, one at a time, about choices these readers will notice: how you open, how much you explain, how directly you ask and how warm you sound. Answer in your own words. When you’re unsure, it offers two short options to pick, combine, change or skip.

  1. Describe choices a reader could see rather than adjectives, since “formal” can mean a full greeting and complete paragraphs to one person and three sentences with the decision first to another. You can share a message you’ve sent this audience, following the data rules, or ask for two contrasting snippets and say which parts sound like you.

  2. After each answer, check the agent’s recap against what you said. If it adds something you didn’t choose, such as “upbeat,” correct it before the next question. Nothing becomes a rule until you confirm it.

  3. At the end, confirm the rules it summarizes or say what to change, and leave a choice open if you’re unsure. If a rule conflicts with a note already in your guide, tell the agent which wording to keep. Rules chosen without an example stay labelled as stated preferences.

Step

Test the setting on one short message

  1. Choose a short message you might send this audience and list its facts: what it needs to say, what readers need to do and anything still undecided. A rough list is fine, or use the practice facts below. One test is enough.

  2. In the same chat, copy Test my audience style and fill in the audience, what the message is for and your facts. The agent writes one message, points to two choices that follow your new rules and asks what feels off.

    Test my Voice Dial on one message
    Download
    Use my Communication Style Guide and the My Voice Dial section in this conversation.

Write one version of the message below for each setting and reader I list. Start from my default rules, then apply that setting's definition for that reader.

No version may change, contradict or add to these facts: the dates, times, decisions and required actions stay the same. Do not add a promise, deadline or reassurance the facts do not support. A version may leave out a detail its reader does not need, but never one the reader needs to act or decide. If a version needs information I have not given, use a placeholder in square brackets.

Message facts, from a fictional practice message (to test a message of my own, I replace these four lines with its facts):
- Starting next month, the help desk closes at 5 p.m. on Fridays instead of 6 p.m.
- Requests sent after 5 p.m. on a Friday are answered on Monday morning.
- Urgent outages still go to the on-call line, which does not change.
- This is a three-month trial. Whether it becomes permanent has not been decided.

Settings and readers:
[two to four, such as Routine for my team, Executive for my director, Customer-facing for a client]

Label each version with its setting and reader. After the versions, list what each one left out. Then name the one or two choices from each setting's definition that make its version different. Do not send or publish anything, and do not rewrite my other style rules.

  3. Check the facts first: every time, action and undecided point should match what you gave it, with nothing added, such as a promise that a trial will become permanent. Then check the style. Can you find the choices you confirmed? Does it sound like you writing to these readers?

  4. Correct a wrong fact first. For a style miss, quote the wording, say what you want instead and tell the agent whether it’s for this message only or a rule for this audience. Check the revision the same way. If the first message already fits, keep it and move on.

Step

Save your updated style guide

  1. In the same chat, ask for your complete updated My Communication Style Guide with the rules you confirmed. The agent should return the whole document, with your new setting under My Voice Dial, plus a short list of changes. If it sends only the new section or writes “unchanged” in place of a section, ask for the full document.

  2. Save the file it offers, or copy the full text into your document editor, as a new copy with today’s date in the name, and keep your original. Compare the two: your general rules, any other settings, examples, review checks and use instructions should all still be there, with only the changes you confirmed. If something is missing or changed, ask the agent for the corrected full guide.

  3. Reopen the new file and make it your master copy. Replace the older guide in any saved agent or project with it.

  4. Next time, attach your guide and name the setting: “Use my director style for this update.” Your agent should also pick a setting when your request clearly points to one audience, ask when it can’t tell, and use your general style otherwise.

    Save both prompts in a Prompts folder in My Agent Files, or another folder you’ll find again, and edit them to fit your work. To add another audience, run the builder again in a new chat with your latest guide.

Build Your Voice Dial

Confirm your result

Confirm the outcomes below to finish this guide.

Final checks

Your saved Communication Style Guide has a tested setting for one audience you write to, with your general rules and other content still in place.

You can ask your agent for that setting by name, and you know how to add another audience with the same prompt.

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