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Read this page to learn how to get your team’s answer to a question without asking a colleague.

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What Ask is for

The console is the screen where you work on Kai instead of with it. It has several modes, and an Agent holds one: Ask. A mode you cannot use is not shown to you, so for most agents the console is one screen.
The console mode switch

The mode switch. An Agent sees Ask only.

Use Ask when a customer asks something you have not answered before, and you want to know what your team’s answer is. It is faster than asking a colleague, and it gives the same answer every time. Open the console and select Ask. The screen greets you with What do you want to know?. Write your question in the box, which reads Ask about anything in the knowledge base….
Ask needs a compiled Brain. Without one the console says: There is no compiled Brain yet, so there is nothing to ask about. Import a chat export first.

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Where the answers come from

Answers come only from your compiled Brain: the answer library, the conversation flows and the brand voice your workspace reviewed. Kai does not answer from general knowledge, and it does not search the internet. The console says so under the box: Answers come only from your compiled Brain, never general knowledge. Each answer carries a Sources list. Select a source to open the entry it came from, with its variants and the past conversations behind it.
The console in Ask mode

Ask, with the sources under the answer.

A source you cannot open is not evidence. If the model names an entry that does not exist, Kai drops it instead of showing a chip that leads nowhere. Everything under Sources is real, and you can read all of it.
Read the source, not only the answer. The entry shows how your team really phrased this, in past conversations, which is what you want in front of you while you write your own reply.

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Three questions worth asking

A price question.
What do we tell someone asking about the price?
Kai answers with your team’s canonical answer, and lists the answer library entries under Sources. Open one to see the wording your colleagues used. A policy question.
What is our answer for gap-year students?
Use this shape for any group or case with a rule behind it. If the Brain has no answer for it, say so to your manager: a question customers ask and the Brain cannot answer is a gap worth closing. A question about a named person.
How do we handle a parent who wants to talk to a specific person?
Customers often ask for one colleague by name. Kai answers with the flow your team follows, so you deflect the same way everybody else does, instead of promising a call nobody can hold.

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When Ask is the wrong tool

Ask does not know this customer. It reads the Brain, not the conversation in front of you. For a reply written for this thread, use the sparkle button in the composer instead. See Send a Kai draft. Ask cannot change an answer. Nothing you write here reaches the Brain. If the answer Ask gives you is wrong or out of date, do not correct it here, and do not send it to the customer. Report it to whoever reviews the Brain, and give them the question you asked and the source you opened. For the other console modes and who holds them, see The console.

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Practice

  1. Open the console, then write: What do we tell someone asking about the price?
  2. Open one entry under Sources and read the past conversations behind it.
  3. Ask the last question a customer asked you that you had to check with a colleague. Compare the answer with what your colleague said.
You have finished the series. Go back to Kai for support agents for the whole path, or read Working with Kai’s drafts for every control on the draft card.