ChatGPT's new Business Hub does two things. It lets you claim your listing (we covered that in How to Claim Your Golf Course in ChatGPT). And for some businesses, it lets you build a business agent: a chat assistant, labeled as yours, that golfers can talk to from your ChatGPT profile.
We tested it the way we test everything, on ourselves first. We claimed smbGOLF's own profile and added our product feed before we touched a client's. Here's what we learned, and how we build an agent for a golf course.
First, what a business agent is (and isn't)
- It lives on your ChatGPT profile. A golfer starts the chat there, and it's kept separate from their own ChatGPT conversation and clearly labeled as your business.
- It's built inside ChatGPT from your instructions, your business context and your product feed. You can't plug in a chatbot you built somewhere else.
- It answers questions and sends people to your website. It can't book a tee time, take a payment or look up an order. Everything ends with a link to your site or booking engine.
- It identifies itself as AI representing your business.
- At launch, OpenAI opened agents to U.S. ecommerce and online-service businesses, with local businesses next. The hub for the golf clubs we've claimed already shows a business agent waiting to be reviewed, so we're building course agents now so they're ready to publish the day the club is eligible and verified.
What we learned adding smbGOLF's product feed
A product feed is a list of what you sell, one row per item, that ChatGPT and your agent use when someone asks what you offer and what it costs. Here's what stood out when we added ours.
1. One row per thing someone can buy. Every purchasable item, or variant, gets its own row with an ID, name, description, link, image, availability and price. For smbGOLF that meant listing each of our services (like CONTENT and CONTENT Plus) as its own item.
2. The feed becomes ChatGPT's answer. When someone asks your agent "how much is it?", the price in your feed is the answer. If the feed is out of date, ChatGPT is confidently wrong on your behalf. Whoever changes a price on your website has to change it in the feed too, or the feed has to come from the website automatically.
3. Every row needs a real page to land on. Each item links to a page on your site. Items without a clear page with the price and a buy or contact button send people to a dead end. Building the feed showed us which of our own services needed better pages.
4. Images and descriptions matter more than you'd think. The description is what the agent paraphrases. Vague copy ("premium experience") gives the agent nothing to say. Specific copy ("18 holes with cart, $89 after 2 p.m. on weekdays") does.
What goes in a golf course's feed
Tee times don't belong in a product feed. They change by the minute with dynamic pricing, so the agent should send golfers to your booking engine instead. Here's what does belong:
- Gift cards in each amount you sell
- Memberships and passes: annual, seasonal, junior, senior, range plans
- Lessons and clinics: private lessons, packages, junior camps, ladies' clinics
- Outing and event packages: per-player outing packages, holiday parties, banquet packages
- Pro shop items you sell online, if you have an online store
- Range and simulator: bucket sizes, bay rentals
How we build a golf course's business agent
Step 1: Claim and verify
The profile has to be claimed, and the profile manager has to pass the government ID check, before you can publish an agent. We handle the claim and walk the GM or owner through the ID step.
Step 2: Confirm ChatGPT can read the website
The hub shows "Access confirmed" when ChatGPT can read your site. If it can't, we fix the robots.txt or security settings first. The agent is only as good as what it can read.
Step 3: Write the guidelines
Guidelines are the agent's instructions. For a course, we write:
- Who it's talking to: public golfers, visitors, members, outing planners
- Tone: warm and clear, the way your best pro shop staff talk on the phone
- What it should always do: send tee time questions to the booking engine, send outing and event questions to the inquiry form, and give the pro shop phone number for anything it can't answer
- What it should never do: promise a tee time, quote a price that isn't on the website, offer a discount you don't offer, or answer for member-only policies it doesn't know
Step 4: Add the business context
This is the knowledge the agent answers from. We pull it from the course website and the club's own documents, and we make sure it matches Google:
- Hours by season, and the twilight and walking rules
- Rates as published, and who can play (public, resort guests, member guests)
- Dress code, cart rules, rain check policy, cancellation policy
- Practice facilities, lessons and junior programs
- Restaurant and bar hours, events, banquet space
- Outing capacity, minimums, and how to request a quote
- Directions, parking and nearby hotels for visitors
Step 5: Add the product feed
Gift cards, memberships, lessons and outing packages go into the feed, each linked to the page where a golfer can buy or inquire.
Step 6: Test it like a golfer would
Configuring or previewing an agent doesn't publish it, so we test before anything goes live. Our standard golf test questions:
- "How much is 18 holes on a Saturday morning?"
- "Can I walk?"
- "Do you have a twilight rate?"
- "Can I bring my 10-year-old?"
- "I'm planning a 40-player outing in April. What do you offer?"
- "Do you have a military discount?" (when the course doesn't)
- "Can you book me a tee time for tomorrow?"
- "What's the dress code?"
Every answer has to match the website exactly, and every booking question has to end with the right link. If an answer is wrong, we fix the source, not just the agent.
Step 7: Publish and report
Publishing is a separate step from building, and it doesn't turn on advertising. Once the agent is live, the hub's agent insights sit next to the brand insights (mentions, profile views and website clicks), and we add them to the monthly report the course already gets from us.
The bottom line
Your ChatGPT agent is a new front desk that never closes, but it can only say what you've taught it. Courses that already have a clear website, a clean Google profile and a working inquiry form will have a great agent on day one. Courses that don't will have an agent that says "please call the pro shop" a lot.
smbGOLF is a digital hospitality agency for golf courses. We claim and verify ChatGPT business profiles, build the product feed, write and test the agent, and report on what it does. See ChatGPT Business Profiles or Find Mike to get your course set up.