✅Improving Answers

Here are some steps you can take to improve the answers you get from your AskAI.

There are a bunch of things you can do to improve your AskAI's responses, here are a few in order from easiest/quickest to some slightly more involved methods:

1. Improve your "System Prompt" (secs - mins)

Your AskAI's system prompt is the thing that controls not only how your AskAI will answer, but also can be used to provide your AskAI with more information about what to expect and what it should respond to.

For example, if you had uploaded a CSV and had your data in a very structured way, e.g.

Name: Joe Bloggs Date of Birth: 18 April 1989 Location: London

Then in your System Prompt, you may want to add something to it saying:

"You will be given information about people, their date of birth and where they live, it will be in the following format:

Name: <Firstname Lastname> Date of Birth: <DD Month YYYY> Location: <City based in the UK>"

By providing this information, the AI is better primed to receive this information in its prompt.

Even if your data is less structured, you can use similar techniques, whereby you tell the AI what kinds of information to expect:

"You will be using academic papers to answer questions about x"

The more information you can provide the AI about its purpose or use case in the prompt the better the response you will receive.

Or you can define who your company is and how your AskAI should respond:

"You work for Acme Corp, a media publishing company based in the US, you must always respond in the first person, and never use the 3rd person"

Or you can specify things you don't want the AI to talk about:

"If asked about any competitors or products other than Acme Corp, respond saying you are unable to help or that the user should contact a member of the sales team"

2. Add relevant content (secs - mins)

Your AskAI is designed to only answer questions based on the content you provide to it.

Therefore, if it isn't answering a question, the likelihood is that it doesn't have the relevant information to answer that question. The more relevant information you upload to your AskAI the more likely and better quality response you are likely to get.

Your AskAI creates responses using multiple points from your documents at once so if you upload 3-4 useful pieces of content then you will get better, more nuanced answers than if you were to just upload a single piece of content.

3. Use "Corrections" (secs - mins)

Every answer your AskAI gives, whether it could answer or you got an "I don't know" response can be "Corrected" or edited (you can see how here).

Corrections are great where either it is a response you don't have specific content for, it is a short or small piece of additional information you want to convey, or you if you want to change the tone or provide users with "Easter Egg" answers (e.g. if they ask about x competitor).

When you use corrections, your AskAI will also be able to answer questions that are similar to that correction.

4. Uploading specific questions and answers (mins - hrs)

In a way, this is an extension of corrections, but allows you to manage lots of questions and answers at once.

We'd recommend, after testing your AskAI out for a little while to see what it can and can't answer, downloading an analytics report of all questions not answered in the analytics section and using this as a base to work out the content you are missing (it’s how we made our AskAI).

Then watch this tutorial to see how you can create a file that you can upload to answer the previously unanswerable questions:

5. Improve the structure of your content (hrs - days)

Uploading your content ‘as-is’ with no amendments will result in very, very good results for 95%+ of use cases, these are just a few things you can do if you have control over the content to squeeze out those last few points.

Think of it how you might think about content optimized for SEO - when a question is asked My AskAI then looks for the chunk of text with the most ‘semantically similar’ content you uploaded, so the more closely the language relates to the question the better the results will be.

1. Clear and concise language: Write the content using clear, concise, and straightforward factual language. Avoid jargon, complex sentences, or ambiguous terms.

2. Structure and organization: Organise the content in a logical and structured manner, with headings and subheadings that accurately describe the sections. Use bullet points and numbered lists to present information clearly.

3. Include relevant keywords: Make sure to include relevant keywords and phrases that users might search for when seeking answers to their questions.

4. Provide detailed explanations: When explaining concepts, features, or procedures, provide detailed, step-by-step instructions.

5. Use tables and charts wisely: If the content includes tables or charts, ensure that they are clear and well-structured.

6. Use descriptive captions for images: When using images, provide descriptive captions that explain the content and context of the image.

7. Proofread and revise: Before uploading, proofread and revise the content to eliminate any errors or inconsistencies.

8. Provide examples and use cases: Include real-life examples and use cases that demonstrate the product's features and functionalities.

9. Update content regularly: Keep the content up-to-date by revising it whenever there are changes to the product, new features, or updated best practices.

10. Locate features, and dimensions close keywords:

    If there are particular dimensions or characteristics you want to relate to a piece of content (e.g. for comparison purposes) you should include them close ‘physically’ to the keyword name

11. Unhidden content

    Any content that is ‘hidden’ behind collapsible/expandable sections will be unable to read.

Is there a good way to format transcripts to get good answers?

If you upload as a raw transcript you should still see good results, however, if you have the time, these things would all improve your results (we would recommend using ChatGPT for this):

• Remove timestamps.

• Clearly identify who is the host and who is the guest when they are speaking.

• Remove anything that isn't about the main/core topic e.g. small talk or ads.

• If jargon is used try and ensure it is consistent.

• Remove any filler words "umms, uhs" etc.

• If you can break it up every 1,000 characters or so with subheadings or summaries of what is being talked about that would help too.