Assist: internal vs external knowledge

What is internal knowledge?

Assist defines internal knowledge as articles and help center documents that only agents and team leads should have access to. End users such as customers would not have access to these documents. These articles are typically articles that define internal processes and workflows that are not intended to be revealed to the customer. An example of what an internal article is a refund and exchanges policy, with various exceptions that an agent can make for a customer.

What is external knowledge?

On the other hand, an external document is one that is fully available to the end user. An example of an external article could be a self service password reset guide.

How can Assist handle the two?

In our document syncs, Assist is able to distinguish whether an article is internal or external. How Assist decides this is platform dependent, as every knowledge base platform has its own set of unique permission rules for who can read what.

With the articles labeled as internal or external, Assist is instructed to only surface external knowledge when drafting a customer reply, but Assist can still use internal knowledge as references when drafting the reply. Assist is also instructed to cite external knowledge sources in their customer facing replies.

Note that for internal replies, such as question and answer, Assist can still freely cite anything and reference any article, as the assumption there is that the agent is asking Assist a question about their policies, so Assist's answer will only be directed to the agent, and not the end user.