Keeping Your AI Agent's Business Facts Current

An AI phone agent is only as accurate as the business facts you give it, and those facts drift: prices change, hours shift with seasons, staff come and go, services are added and dropped. Keep them current by assigning one owner, updating facts the same day anything changes, reviewing the whole sheet monthly and before each season, and testing with a call after every edit.

Why stale facts are worse with AI

A staff member who knows prices went up last week adjusts automatically. An AI agent quotes whatever's in its facts until someone edits them, to every caller, in the same confident tone. A single outdated fact repeated 40 times a month adds up to real cost.

Some statements also carry legal weight. For example, the FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule expects sellers to have a reasonable basis for shipping-time claims. If your agent states shipping times, they need to match what you can actually do.

What goes stale, and how fast

Fact	How often it changes	Check
Hours (including holidays)	Seasonally; holidays yearly	Monthly, and before each holiday
Prices and fees	Several times a year	Monthly
Promotions	Weekly to monthly	Remove when they end
Staff names and roles	Whenever someone joins or leaves	Same day
Services offered	A few times a year	Quarterly
Service area	Rarely	Quarterly
Policies (cancellation, returns, deposits)	Rarely, but important	Quarterly
Links (forms, booking, payment)	When the website changes	Monthly; click each one
Address, parking, directions	Rarely	After any move or construction
Wait times and lead times	Weekly in busy seasons	Weekly in season

The owner and the same-day rule

Assign one person to own the facts. Then set one rule for everyone else:

"If you change a price, hour, policy, service or staff role, tell [owner] the same day."

Put it in your team's onboarding and in the place where prices are changed (your price list, booking system, website editor).

The monthly review (20 minutes)

• Read the whole facts sheet top to bottom.
• Check every price against your current price list.
• Confirm hours for the next 60 days, including holidays.
• Remove expired promotions.
• Click every link.
• Check staff names.
• Look at last month's transcripts for questions the agent couldn't answer, and add answers. See how to review AI agent conversations.

Seasonal checklists

Before a busy season:

• Updated hours and staffing.
• Lead times ("we're booking about two weeks out").
• Seasonal services and prices.
• AI minute balance topped up. See managing a prepaid AI minute balance.

Before holidays:

• Closed dates and reduced hours.
• What callers should do in an emergency while you're closed.
• When normal service resumes. See AI receptionist coverage for weekends and holidays.

After a slow season:

• Remove seasonal offers and wait times.
• Re-check prices.

Write facts that age well

Some phrasings stay accurate longer:

Ages badly	Ages better
"We're booking two weeks out" (in March)	Remove when it changes, or "Current lead time: see below," updated weekly
"Our new location"	"Our location at 118 Main St."
"This month's special"	Specific dates: "Through October 31"
"Ask for Jennifer"	"Ask for the service manager"
"Prices start at $89" (no date)	Same, but on a monthly check list

Dates in promotions let the agent avoid offering an expired deal, and role names survive staff changes.

Example: a price change done right

A pet groomer (example) raises its large-dog bath price from $65 to $75 on November 1.

1. October 20: the owner adds to the facts: "Large dog bath: $65 through October 31; $75 starting November 1." Callers booking ahead hear the right price for their date.
2. October 21: the owner calls the agent and asks "How much for a bath for my golden retriever in November?" The agent says $75.
3. November 1: the owner removes the old price line, leaving "Large dog bath: $75."
4. November 8: the weekly transcript review checks price questions; all quote $75.

Four small steps, no customer told the wrong price, and a dated record of what the facts said when.

Version your facts

Keep a dated copy of the facts sheet each time you make a significant change. When a customer says "your assistant told me it was $89," you can check what the facts said that day, and the transcript shows what the agent actually said.

Test after every change

After editing:

1. Call the agent from a phone that isn't in your contacts.
2. Ask about the changed fact in two different ways ("How much is a tune-up?" and "What do you charge to service my AC?").
3. Ask about something related that didn't change, to make sure you didn't break it.
4. Read next week's transcripts for that topic.

Testing changes against real use is the practical version of what frameworks like NIST's AI Risk Management Framework recommend: measure AI behavior in context, then manage what you find.

Keep facts and website in sync

Callers and the AI should hear the same thing as your website says. When you update one, update the others:

• Website
• AI agent facts
• Voicemail greeting
• Google Business Profile hours
• Booking system

A single "source of truth" document that all of these copy from makes this easier.

When facts get long

Facts sheets grow. If yours gets long, reorganize rather than append: group by topic (hours, services, prices, policies, links), delete duplicates, and remove anything nobody asks about. Shorter facts are easier to keep accurate and easier for the agent to use. See building the business facts sheet.

Updating facts in Callata

In Callata, each AI agent has a "business facts the agent can share" field (up to 12,000 characters) and separate instructions (up to 4,000). Agents are told to state only facts from that field and to say the team will follow up on anything else. When you save changes to a live agent, Callata republishes it with the new facts, so the next call uses them. The same facts are used when the agent replies to texts. Account owners manage agents; set a reminder for your monthly review.

Callata Office is $99 per month for five users; AI agents use prepaid minutes at $0.25 per minute. Get started with Callata.