If your team works in Slack, the same questions show up again and again in DMs and channels. Many of them land on the founder or one senior person. A bot that answers them sounds like the obvious fix, and there are several kinds. They differ mostly in one thing: where the answer comes from.
1. A pinned FAQ and a channel bookmark
Write the most common answers in one canvas or document and pin it in the main channel. It is free and fast. It depends on people looking, and on someone keeping it current. Good as a first step, and you will reuse the same written answers for any bot later.
2. Slack's own workflows and saved answers
Slack workflows can post a set reply when someone uses a keyword or a form. This works for a handful of fixed questions, like how to request time off. It breaks down when people ask the same thing in different words.
3. An AI bot that searches your Slack and documents
Several AI tools read your channels and connected documents and answer questions from whatever they find. This is powerful when the knowledge is already written down somewhere. The common complaints are the other side of that: they answer from old threads that are no longer true, and they try to answer questions that needed a person to decide.
4. An AI bot that answers only from approved answers
The stricter approach: the bot answers only from a list of answers a responsible person approved, shows which answer it used and when it was confirmed, and says it does not know for anything else. It covers fewer questions on day one, and grows as each unknown question is answered once and approved.
The one rule that matters most
Whatever you choose, an answer your team cannot trust sends them back to asking you, and that undoes the whole point. Prefer setups where every answer shows its source and date, and where the bot is allowed to say I do not know.
Questions to ask before you pick one
- Where does each answer come from, and can I see it?
- What happens when the bot does not know?
- Can I keep some answers private to me or to one team?
- Who updates an answer when it changes, and does the bot pick that up at once?
- Is it always clear to teammates that they are talking to a bot?
Where AskMyStartup fits
AskMyStartup takes the fourth approach: an AI clone of the founder that answers only from answers you approved, shows where each answer came from, and asks you when it does not know. It runs on the web in private beta, with Slack as one of the next places it will answer. To size the problem first, try the free repeat question cost calculator.