What to measure after you switch on an AI assistant
You do not need a dashboard full of charts. A handful of numbers, read weekly alongside real conversations, tell you whether the assistant is helping.
Take a baseline first
Before you switch the assistant on, write down last month's figures: contacts received, how many were answered, how long replies took and how many bookings or orders came from them. Without a baseline, any improvement is a guess.
1. Conversations finished without staff
The share of conversations where the customer got what they needed and no person had to step in. A low figure usually means the knowledge is thin. Read a sample before you chase the number, because a high figure can also hide customers who simply gave up.
2. Hand-overs and their reasons
Count how many conversations were passed to staff and sort them by reason: asked for a person, complaint, missing answer, out of scope. Missing answers are fixes to the knowledge; the others are the assistant behaving as designed.
3. Time to first reply
For messages, how long a customer waits for the first response. For calls, how long the agent takes to start speaking after the caller finishes. Compare with your baseline and with the hours when nobody was available.
4. Missed contacts
Calls that went unanswered and messages with no reply. This should fall, especially out of hours. It is often the clearest sign that the assistant is paying for itself.
5. Bookings, orders and leads captured
Count the appointments booked, orders taken and complete enquiries collected through the assistant. These are the outcomes that matter to the business.
6. Customer feedback
Add a one-question rating at the end of a conversation, or read the comments customers leave. A rising number of complaints about the assistant is a signal to look at tone and hand-over.
Read conversations, not just numbers
Set aside half an hour each week to read twenty conversations, including a few that went well. Numbers tell you where to look; conversations tell you what to fix. See designing the handover and how to write the knowledge document. You can start measuring on the free plan, and compare plans on the pricing page.