In a twelve-person property company, only three people could answer a tenant call.
The right response to any maintenance issue depended on the building, the landlord’s preferences, and the service contract. Three people held all of it in their heads. Everyone else had to go and ask one of them first.
So calls waited. Repairs waited.
Then one of the three spent an afternoon writing the rules out, building by building. Which contractor to call. Which landlord wants telling before work starts. Which issues can be approved without asking. Two pages each.
With that document, AI could draft the right response for the right building. The three experts stopped being a bottleneck on every call, and the document turned out to be the best training material for new staff (opens in a new tab) the firm had ever produced.
Where the real knowledge lives
Most companies have a handbook. Two hundred pages. Few readers get past page three. And the knowledge that actually runs the business was never in it.
It sits with the people who just know. The supplier who needs orders by Wednesday or it ships late. The client who disputes every invoice over a certain figure. The process on the wall chart that hasn’t matched reality since 2019.
None of it is written down. All of it runs the place. And it walks out of the door when those people do.
That is exactly what AI needs
Skip the company history and the polished manual. Write down what your best person knows that nobody else does, the way you’d explain it to a new hire on their first morning.
Teaching AI about your business is a writing job before it is a technology job. (opens in a new tab) The technology is the easy part.
One safety note: leave out passwords, client financial details, and anything you wouldn’t want a new hire to see on day one. Teach it how the business works. Keep the account details out of it.
Start with one person: whoever gets asked the most questions. That document is your AI’s first lesson, and your firm’s second copy of something it currently has one of.