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

Define how agents perform any task

Procedures can help agents accurately 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 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.

Procedures in practice

Here's how teams put Procedures to work across industries:

• Healthcare: patient intake and insurance verification before an appointment
• Financial services: charge disputes and step-by-step loan application intake
• E-commerce: returns and exchanges, order status, product troubleshooting, and upsells
• Telecom: diagnosing connectivity issues, account updates, and plan changes

Each of these can run as a structured or free-form Procedure depending on the specific use case.

Start from your existing SOPs

The playbooks your team already trusts can easily translate into agent behavior and each one can be owned (and changed) by the person who knows it best.

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.

More control for better customer outcomes

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