An AI assistant for members can only answer from the pages you have published, so most of the preparation is editorial. Collect the questions members actually ask, give each one a clear, current answer on its own page, and write down the rules that today live only in someone's head. Start with the twenty most-asked questions and add the rest after launch.
This guide is for the membership or communications lead at a chamber of commerce or association with an assistant on the way, or one under discussion. The steps suit any assistant that answers from your own content, and they improve the library for members who will never type a question into one.
An assistant of this kind is a reader. It looks through what you have published, finds the passages that match a question and puts them into a reply. It was not on the phone when your finance officer explained the refund rule, and it cannot tell that the 2022 benefits leaflet was replaced by a newer one somewhere else.
So the quality of its answers follows the state of your pages. Where a page exists and is current, the member gets a good answer with a source. Where the page is out of date, the member gets a confident wrong answer, also with a source. Where no page exists, a well-built assistant says it does not know, and a badly built one guesses. Almost all of the work that improves those answers happens in the library, and it is worth doing whether or not you ever switch an assistant on.
For two weeks, ask everyone who deals with members to log each question they answer by phone or email. A shared spreadsheet is enough. Record the question in the member's own words, the date, who answered it and where the answer lives, if it lives anywhere.
Include people who would not describe themselves as member services: the events coordinator who fields questions about parking and dietary requirements, the finance officer who explains invoices to a company's accounts team, whoever answers the main phone line and, at a chamber, the team that handles export documents. At the end of the fortnight, group the questions that mean the same thing and count them. That ranked list is your plan.
Next, look hard at what you have already published, for four kinds of problem.
Out-of-date pages do the most harm, because the assistant quotes them with the same confidence as current ones. Look for last year's event prices, a grant scheme that has closed, a partner offer that has ended and a contact who left two years ago.
Duplicates come next. If there are three versions of the membership benefits document, the assistant may quote any of them. Keep one up-to-date version and remove the others.
Scanned PDFs are the hidden problem. A scanned page is a picture of words, and software that reads text may find nothing in it. Open each PDF and try to select a sentence. If you cannot, publish the content as text or replace the file with a version that has real text in it.
The fourth problem is the policy that exists only in someone's head, which needs a step of its own.
Every organisation runs on rules nobody wrote down. The assistant cannot know them, and neither can a new member of staff. Typical examples at a chamber or association:
Where the honest answer is "it depends", write down what it depends on and who decides. A page that explains how exceptions are handled is still a real answer.
One caution while you write. Anything you publish, the assistant can read and repeat to any member who asks. Do not upload a contact spreadsheet, board minutes or a list of members in arrears to make an answer easier. If you are unsure whether something should be published, ask whoever handles data protection for you first.
Give each common question its own page, with the answer near the top. Title it the way a member would ask it. "Cancelling an event booking: refunds and deadlines" is easier to find, for members and for the assistant, than "Events terms and conditions v3".
Use members' words in titles and tags as well. Your team might say "certificate of origin" and "export documentation" interchangeably, while a member types "paperwork for shipping to Canada". The two-week log shows you the words members use, so copy them.
Every page should carry a date by which someone checks it again, and a named role responsible for it. Prices, grant schemes, legislation and event details need short review periods. A guide to chairing a good committee meeting can wait a year.
It is tempting to wait until the whole library is tidy, and it is rarely necessary. Take the top twenty from your log, publish a good answer to each, ask a colleague to test them with the questions as members phrased them, and launch. A small library that is right serves members better than a large one that is partly wrong, and the gaps will show you what to write next.
Ask your supplier where you can see what members asked, including the questions that got no useful answer. Set aside half an hour each week to read them. Each one is a member who tried to find something and could not. Publish one new answer every week, and the library grows in the direction members are pulling it.
When a member reports a wrong answer, follow its source back to the page it came from and correct the page. That fixes the answer for everyone who asks after them, and for members who find the page by browsing. Resist writing special instructions into the assistant to cover one bad page, because the page stays wrong for everyone who reads it directly. If a wrong answer has no source at all, raise it with your supplier.
We make Portava, membership software with an assistant that works the way this guide assumes. It answers from everything published in the portal: events, news, resources and the documents uploaded to your files area. There is nothing to train or script: once a page is published, the assistant can answer from it. It cannot see drafts, or anything that was never written down.
A resource can be an article, guide, template, checklist, report, video, webinar recording, download or link, organised with categories and tags. The Suggest tags and summary button drafts both from your content for you to edit. Publishing runs a completeness check, a resource can be scheduled, and a Review by date flags it back to you when it is due another look. Search reads inside documents as well as titles.
The Assistant section of the administrator portal shows the questions members ask, including those that got no useful answer, which gives you the weekly list described above. Answers cite their sources, so a bad answer leads you to the page that needs fixing.
One limit to plan for: the assistant cannot read your existing website. Content has to be published in Portava or added as a resource before it can answer from it, so moving your most-asked answers across is part of the preparation.
If you would like to see how publishing and the assistant fit together, request a demo.
Allow two weeks to collect questions, then as long as your team needs to audit and write the first twenty answers alongside normal work. The time depends mostly on how much is already written down. Launching with twenty good answers beats waiting months for a complete library, because members' questions will show you what to write next.
Usually not all of it. Start with the pages that answer the questions members ask most, and make sure each has one clear answer and a title that matches how members ask. Some assistants read only content held in their own system, so check whether yours can read your website before planning the work.
Not always. A scanned document without a text layer is an image of words, and unless the software converts it to text first, it may find nothing there. Test each file by trying to select a sentence. If you cannot, publish the content as a text page, or replace the file with a version that has real text in it.
Open the source it cited and correct that page, or publish the missing page if nothing covered the question properly. Correcting the page fixes the answer for every member who asks later and for anyone who reads the page directly. If a wrong answer comes with no source at all, raise it with your supplier.
Twenty is a sensible starting point. Take them from a two-week log of what members ask by phone and email, ranked by how often each comes up. Publish a clear answer to each, test them with real wording, then add one new answer every week from the questions the assistant could not answer.