Introducing Procedures in ElevenAgents

As AI agents take on critical tasks like refunds, billing issues, and product troubleshooting, you need a clear way to guide their behavior for each.

Similar to how employees follow standard operating Procedures (SOPs), Procedures let you provide agents with a set of instructions to follow in common scenarios. They make it easy for both technical and non-technical team members to build, manage, and update highly capable agents.

Because each Procedure loads only when triggered, moving specific instructions out of a broad system prompt can help make your agent faster.

Structured where it matters, adaptive where it helps

Procedures enable agents to handle both well-defined and open-ended tasks.

Structured Procedures run a fixed sequence of steps the same way every time. You can build them using a combination of natural language, tool calls, and instruction chips. They fit tasks where consistency matters most, like claims intake, identity verification, and payment collection.

Free-form Procedures are less prescriptive. You can include the context, steps, and guardrails specific to a task, and the agent interprets the instructions, calls tools, and adapts to the conversation. Free-form Procedures fit tasks that shift as they go, like technical troubleshooting and billing questions.

Start from the SOPs you already have

If you have existing SOPs you want your agent to follow, you can import them as docs, PDFs, or txt files and ElevenAgents drafts a Procedure for you to confirm or refine.

Part of how you shape your agent

Procedures help you control your agent, alongside the system prompt, workflows, and guardrails you already use. With clearly defined agent behavior you can drive better customer outcomes, from higher upsell conversion rates to faster ticket resolutions

Procedures are now available in ElevenAgents, currently in Alpha.

Learn more: https://elevenlabs.io/docs/eleven-agents/customization/procedures