diff --git a/src/axolotl/prompt_strategies/bradley_terry/chat_template.py b/src/axolotl/prompt_strategies/bradley_terry/chat_template.py
index 4f60842c5..0a02f54e5 100644
--- a/src/axolotl/prompt_strategies/bradley_terry/chat_template.py
+++ b/src/axolotl/prompt_strategies/bradley_terry/chat_template.py
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ class BTChatTemplateStrategy(ChatTemplateStrategy):
     Bradley-Terry reward model pairwise chat template prompt strategy.
     """
 
-    def tokenize_prompt(self, prompt):
+    def _tokenize_single_prompt(self, prompt):
         """
 
         :param prompt: the actual row of data from the underlying dataset
diff --git a/src/axolotl/prompt_strategies/chat_template.py b/src/axolotl/prompt_strategies/chat_template.py
index 519d37ff8..f77dd30d9 100644
--- a/src/axolotl/prompt_strategies/chat_template.py
+++ b/src/axolotl/prompt_strategies/chat_template.py
@@ -226,11 +226,14 @@ class ChatTemplateStrategy(PromptTokenizingStrategy):
         # Let calling code know we can handle lists of examples
         return True
 
-    def tokenize_prompt(self, prompt: dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, List[List[int]]]:
+    def tokenize_prompt(self, prompt: dict[str, Any]):
         """
         Public method that can handle either a single prompt or a batch of prompts.
         """
 
+        if not all(isinstance(v, list) for v in prompt.values()):
+            return self._tokenize_single_prompt(prompt)
+
         res = defaultdict(lambda: [])
         feature_names = list(prompt.keys())