The interruption cost
In most businesses two or three people answer everyone else's questions all day. They are usually your most experienced staff and it is the least valuable use of their time.
An internal assistant absorbs the repeatable half of that, which is more than people expect.
What to feed it
- Process documents and how-to guides
- Product and service details, including specifications
- Policies — holiday, expenses, escalation
- Price lists and discount rules
- Anything new starters ask in their first month
The new-starter question list is the perfect content brief. It is everything that is obvious to everyone except the people who need it most.
Lower risk than customer-facing
An internal wrong answer is caught by someone who knows better and costs a minute. The same wrong answer to a customer costs considerably more.
That makes internal use a sensible first deployment, and a good way to build confidence before anything is customer-facing.
It exposes documentation gaps
- The unanswered-question log is your internal documentation backlog
- Written in the words your own staff use
- Prioritised automatically by how often it is asked
- And visibly closed when the answer is written
Where to put it
Somewhere people already are: the intranet, a shared page, or a chat platform. An assistant on a separate site people must remember to visit gets used for a fortnight.
Convenience determines adoption far more than answer quality does, at least at first.