How to write the knowledge document your AI assistant answers from
The quality of an AI assistant is mostly the quality of the document it answers from. A good one takes an afternoon to write and saves you weeks of corrections.
Start from real questions
Export last month's messages and call notes and list the questions customers actually asked. Group the duplicates. Your top thirty questions will cover most of what the assistant needs. Do not start from your brochure; brochures answer questions customers never ask.
One topic, one answer, plain sentences
Write each answer as you would say it to a customer: short sentences, the number or the date included, and no jargon. Put one topic in one place. If the same fact appears in three places, it will be out of date in two of them.
Say what you do not do
Customers ask for things you do not offer. Write those answers too: that you do not deliver outside a certain area, do not give refunds after thirty days, do not quote over chat. An assistant that has the boundary in writing will not invent a yes.
Include the awkward cases
- What happens if the customer is late or wants to reschedule.
- What a customer should do if an order arrives damaged.
- Who to contact for a complaint and how long a reply takes.
- Public holiday and festive season hours.
Write numbers carefully
Prices, opening hours and policies change. Give each one a date and a person responsible for updating it. If a price depends on a condition, state the condition. A wrong number in the document will be repeated to every customer.
Cover the languages you serve
If many customers write in Malay, include the Malay terms they use for your products and services, including the informal ones. The assistant can follow mixed language, but it answers better when your own words are in the document. See testing mixed-language messages.
Tell it when to stop
List the topics that must go to a person: complaints, refunds, anything involving health, safety or a legal threat. Write who takes over and how.
Keep it alive
Read the conversations every week for the first month. Each time the assistant guessed or said nothing, add the missing answer. After a month the gaps shrink quickly. Start on the free plan, where you can load your document into a website chatbot and test it on your own questions, and see an AI assistant for a small business for a rollout order.