Illustrative imagery

B2B technology20253–5 months

An AI assistant for repeated sales questions

Client: A B2B software company

One of the project’s screens, in a desktop frame. It is shown again with its caption under “On screen”.

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  • AI Design
  • Product & Experience Design
  • Technology & Intelligence

At a glance

The brief. Give sales an assistant that answers from approved sources and says when it does not know.

Client
A B2B software company
Year
2025
Duration
3–5 months
Scale
Website and product

From brief to result

How it was built, starting with the evaluation set.

The brief in full, our approach, what we built and what it set out to change.

The brief, in full

Sales engineers answered the same product questions repeatedly, and the answers went out of date: an old limit here, a retired feature there. Prospects wanted answers on the spot, but a wrong answer on security or pricing was worse than none.

The brief: an assistant that answers from approved sources, says when it does not know and hands over to a person when needed.

Our approach

We built the evaluation set before the assistant: questions from sales calls, each with its approved answer and required source. Every model and prompt change has to pass it.

The automatic checks were written as policy first: what the assistant may answer, what it must refuse and when it routes to sales. Prompt-injection tests (OWASP LLM01) run with every release.

How it ran

  1. Weeks 1–3Questions

    Questions collected from call notes, tagged by topic and by risk.

  2. Weeks 2–6Tests

    The evaluation set and its rubric: grounded, correct and cited, or a clean refusal.

  3. Weeks 6–14Build

    Search over approved documentation, the assistant interface and the hand-off to sales.

  4. Months 4–5Release gate

    Released only when the evaluation set passes, with injection tests on every change.

What we built

An assistant that answers from approved product documentation, passes the evaluation set before each release and hands over to a person when confidence is low.

What we delivered

  1. Evaluation set and scoring rubric
  2. Answer, refusal and escalation policy
  3. Assistant interface for site and product
  4. Conversation audit dashboard

What changed

The assistant is built to answer only from approved documentation, show the page it used and pass pricing and security questions to a person. Every conversation is logged for review.

Accuracy is measured on the evaluation set, and the figures are the client’s to publish.

How it is measured

Picture story

The questions, collected from sales calls.

These pictures are illustrative: licensed stock photography and code-built mock-ups that show the setting, not the client’s own work. Credits are at the foot of the page.

Three colleagues at a table; one holds up a printed page of pie charts while the others look on.
Fig. 01Questions from sales calls became the evaluation set.Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash (opens in a new tab)
A smiling woman works at a laptop at her desk, headphones and pens beside her, sticky notes on the wall behind.
Fig. 02Answers in the moment, with the source on screen.Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash (opens in a new tab)
A large open-plan office with rows of desks and monitors, people working in the distance.
Fig. 03Pricing, legal and security questions go to a person, every time.Arlington Research on Unsplash (opens in a new tab)
A man gestures beside a screen while colleagues take notes at white desks in a meeting room.
Fig. 04Release reviews start from the evaluation results.Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash (opens in a new tab)

On screen

An answer with its sources, and the release check behind it.

Illustrative, code-built screens of the kind the programme produced, not the client’s own. Open any of them full screen.

Illustration: an assistant answers a question about single sign-on with two cited sources and a confidence note, and offers to hand the pricing part of the question to a person.
DesktopAn answer with its sources, and a hand-off for the part that needs a person.
Illustration: an evaluation dashboard for a release, showing pass rates for grounded answers, refusals, escalations and injection tests against their targets.
LaptopThe release gate: every change runs against the evaluation set first.

Field notes

Notes from the programme, in detail.

What the evaluation set checks

  • Grounded: every statement traceable to an approved source
  • Cited: the source is shown to the person asking
  • Refuses cleanly when the answer is not in the sources
  • Hands pricing, legal and security questions to sales
  • Ignores instructions hidden in user input (OWASP LLM01)

Outcomes

Three measures, led by answer accuracy.

What each measure is compared with, when it is read and who reports it, with results once the client approves them.

The measurement plan

  1. Answer accuracy on the evaluation set

    Compared with
    The approved answers in the evaluation set
    Read
    At every release
    Result
    Awaiting approval Reported by The evaluation lead
  2. Escalation rate to sales

    Compared with
    Questions sales answered by hand before launch
    Read
    Monthly, from the conversation log
    Result
    Awaiting approval Reported by Sales operations
  3. Demo-to-opportunity rate

    Compared with
    The two quarters before launch
    Read
    Quarterly
    Result
    Awaiting approval Reported by The client’s revenue operations team

Results

Figures pending client approval

We publish results only with the client’s written approval. Until then, the programme is judged on the plan beside this, which we can walk you through under NDA.

Credits

The team and the pictures.

People are named only with their agreement.

Team 6 people

  • Product lead × 1
  • AI engineers × 2
  • Conversation designer × 1
  • Front-end engineer × 1
  • Evaluation lead × 1

Credits

Strategy, design and engineering
Xterra Edze
Screens and before-and-after views
Xterra Edze (code-built illustrations)
Photography
Licensed stock from Unsplash, credited picture by picture

Pictures 6

Licensed stock photography and code-built mock-ups chosen to show the setting, not the client’s own work.

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