Creating custom topics

Adding a topic for something specific to your business. The description does the work, so write it carefully.

Adding a topic for something specific to your business. The description does the work, so write it carefully.

Create one

1. In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar and select Intelligent triage > Topic.
2. Click Create topic and fill in the Name. Up to 255 characters, and no special characters.
3. Write the Description: what the ticket is about, and what does not belong. You have 650 characters, which is more than you need and less than it sounds.
4. Pick a Category, or use + Add category and subcategory to make a new one.
5. Click Create custom topic. It starts classifying new tickets straight away.

There is no field for examples: the description is the only thing the model reads, which is why the next section matters more than the name. An account can hold five hundred custom topics, so the limit will not be what stops you.

Describe the boundary, not just the subject

"Questions about our loyalty programme, including points, tiers and rewards. Not general account questions." The second sentence is what stops it absorbing everything adjacent.

Write the description in your customers' words

Take the wording from real tickets. An invented description is cleaner, longer and better spelled than anything that arrives, and the labelling follows the description, not your intentions.

Add one when there is volume behind it

A topic worth creating is one you would route or report on. If the answer to "what would we do differently for these tickets" is nothing, the topic is not needed.

Check it against its neighbours

After adding one, look at whether tickets that used to be labelled correctly have moved into it. A new topic that overlaps an existing one degrades both, and this is visible within days.

Give it two weeks

Before routing on it. New topics need volume before you can judge whether the description is doing what you meant.

Revisit the description

Where labelling is inconsistent, the description is the thing to change, not the name. Sharpening the boundary sentence fixes most accuracy problems.

See also

• Setting up and managing topics
• Improving the quality of your topics
• Entities: pulling unique information out of tickets