How to Set Up an AI Virtual Assistant to Answer Questions

AI is Streamlining Policy and Procedure Access

As more of your processes move to digital formats, providing employees with accurate, up-to-date information on policies and procedures is critical for maintaining efficiency and compliance. Traditional virtual agents rely on predefined scripts, providing answers to expected questions. However, this approach often results in inconsistencies, delays, and user frustration when the needed answers aren’t part of the programmed responses.

AI-based agents take a more innovative approach. They read relevant content and use natural language processing to provide real-time answers, reducing frustration and offering reliable responses to a broader range of questions. This method allows AI-based agents to provide instant, reliable responses to questions about company policies and procedures by addressing a broad range of potential queries rather than guessing which questions might be asked. These agents can understand complex documents, retrieve real-time data, and tailor responses to an employee’s role, location, and specific needs. By automatically answering employee questions, AI agents reduce the burden on HR and other departments, allowing employees to focus on higher-value tasks.

However, an AI-based agent’s success depends on its ability to provide accurate, secure, and contextually relevant information. Misformation, hallucinations, slow response times, or security lapses can erode trust and lead to serious operational risks. Choosing the right AI partner with a robust solution is essential.

Enter Krista—an AI-led automation platform that orchestrates workflows for employees across departments. Unlike generic chatbots, Krista integrates with your existing systems to ensure accurate and secure information. Krista’s advanced capabilities include role-based access control, real-time data integration, and robust security measures, making her a reliable solution for retrieval augmented generation and workflow orchestration based on the provided answers and user context. With Krista, you can automate and orchestrate nearly any business process while upholding the highest security and compliance standards.

Evaluating Your Policy and Procedure Management Challenges

The first step in setting up an AI-based agent is assessing your organization’s current needs and challenges. Identifying these challenges helps you determine the right area to start with and ensures successful implementation.

Identify Workflow Challenges

Start by analyzing existing FAQs and how employees access and receive answers to benefit, policy, and procedure questions. Small numbers of employees will try to find the answer, but in many cases, they just phone or e-mail a friendly HR representative to get the answer. Common issues include:

• Inconsistent Information: Employees receive outdated or conflicting information depending on who they ask or which document they reference.
• Time-Consuming Processes: Manually searching through documents or waiting for responses from HR slows down productivity and frustrates employees.
• High Volume of Repetitive Questions: HR and management teams spend significant time answering the same questions repeatedly, diverting attention from more strategic tasks.

These challenges not only hinder efficiency but also risk non-compliance with local laws and company policies, leading to serious consequences.

Understanding Limitations of Generic Chatbots and Copilots

While generic chatbots and AI copilots seem like quick solutions, they struggle with the complexity of organizational policies. They lack context and can’t provide accurate, personalized answers based on your company’s specifics. Generic chatbots and generative AI (GenAI) services like ChatGPT or Gemini deliver responses based on their training data (not your actual policies). They aren’t equipped to pull real-time information from your internal systems or understand the nuances of your organizational structure to answer employees contextually. This limitation leads to inaccurate or generalized answers that don’t fully meet your employees’ needs.

To get around these limitations, an HR generalist will create the context by looking up an employee, determine the correct policy that pertains to the question, and then manually cut and paste the policy into GenAI hoping it creates a reasonable and accurate answer. The HR generalist has to do all of the leg work to find the company’s specifics in the context of the employee asking. This isn’t more efficient.

Moreover, these tools often lack robust security features, which are critical when dealing with sensitive employee information. Without proper security controls, you risk exposing confidential data or providing access to unauthorized personnel, leading to compliance issues.

Why a Tailored Solution Like Krista Is Necessary

To overcome these limitations, choose a solution specifically designed to handle the complexities of your organization’s policies and procedures. Krista simplifies the entire process and manages security and accuracy for each employee role.

Krista reads your company policies, integrates seamlessly with your existing systems, and provides real-time, contextually accurate answers. With robust security controls, Krista ensures that sensitive information is accessible only to authorized personnel, safeguarding compliance and data privacy. Her advanced security measures ensure that sensitive information is accessible only to those with appropriate permissions, reducing the risk of data leaks and breaches. Additionally, Krista’s ability to manage document access, roles, and security controls ensures that the information delivered is both precise and secure.

The Mechanics of Krista AI

To effectively implement an AI-led automation platform like Krista, it’s essential to understand how she functions and how to tailor her to your organization’s specific needs. Krista’s capabilities go far beyond ChatGPT—she is a robust solution that reads, understands, and secures your organizational knowledge while orchestrating processes based on how she answers employee questions.

Reading and Understanding Policies and FAQs

Krista’s first step in providing accurate answers is her ability to read and digest your organization’s knowledge management systems, policy, and standard operating procedure (SOP) documents. Unlike generic AI tools, Krista doesn’t just pull from static, pre-programmed responses; she actively reads and comprehends the content within your documents.

Krista scans various types of documents—whether PDFs, Word files, web pages, or other formats—and extracts relevant information. She then organizes this information to answer employee questions accurately and contextually. Whether the inquiry is about a specific policy, procedure, customer support, or a frequently asked question, Krista ensures the response is based on the most up-to-date and relevant information.

Implementing Access and Security Controls

Krista sets herself apart with her ability to implement and manage access and security controls. When dealing with sensitive employee information or restricted company policies, it’s crucial to ensure that only authorized personnel have access.

Krista allows you to define specific roles and permissions based on job function, geographic location, and the efficacy dates of certain documents. For example, you can set Krista to restrict access to a particular policy document only to HR managers in the United States and only if the policy is currently in effect. These granular security controls ensure that information is not only accurate but also securely distributed according to your organization’s needs.

Setting up these controls is straightforward within Krista’s interface. You can easily map who has access to what information, ensuring compliance with both internal policies and external regulations.

Real-Time Data Integration

To provide the most accurate and timely information, Krista integrates with your existing systems via APIs for real-time data retrieval. By leveraging real-time data, Krista ensures that the answers she provides are not only correct but also relevant to the current context. For instance, if an employee asks about their current PTO balance or the status of a project, Krista provides a personalized answer since she can access and deliver the most up-to-date information available based on each employee’s role, eliminating delays and inaccuracies that occur with outdated data.

Configuring Krista for Your Organization

Setting Krista up to answer policy and procedure questions inside your organization is simple. In this example, we have collected all proposed US legislation regarding AI and its use as a document set. A document set is simply a group of documents or web pages that Krista will pull from to answer questions.

Follow these steps on how to get started:

1. Upload Your Documents

First, gather all relevant documents related to your organization’s FAQs, policies and procedures. Upload them into Krista. This is where Krista will draw the answers from when you or your team ask questions. In this demo, we are using the proposed US legislation on AI. We collected 93 URLs from congress.gov and uploaded them into Krista as a document set.

2. Ask a Question

Once your documents are uploaded, you can ask your first question. For example, you might ask, “What is the company’s vacation policy?” or “How many vacation hours do I have available. Krista will search your documents and find the correct answer. For example, in our demo, we asked, ‘Do any of the bills address bias?

3. Receive the Answer

Krista will provide a clear, accurate answer to your question based on the content of your documents. This eliminates the need to search through files manually. Krista will answer the question and provide the source so you can verify accuracy or read the source file for more information.

4. Continue or Conclude

At this point, you can either ask another question or click “All Done” if you’ve finished. Additionally, you can configure Krista to continue orchestrating a process for each user’s query. However, in this example, we are providing a simple Q&A example to answer questions. Krista is designed to make the process of retrieving information quick and easy, whether you need a single answer or multiple clarifications.

5. Ask Your Own Question of the Document Set

Open Krista in the lower right hand corner of this page and ask any question about the proposed AI legislation. You can ask about certain states, oversight, and AI attribution. If the answer to your question is inside the documents, Krista will answer you and point you to the source document. You can also ask a question that is out of context to see how Krista would answer a question about sports or music.

Transform Your Organization with Krista AI

Setting up Krista as an AI-based agent to answer policy and procedure questions is a strategic move that can transform how your organization starts its AI journey. By following the key steps outlined—assessing your organization’s needs, understanding how Krista works, configuring the system to meet specific requirements, deploying it effectively, and leveraging its full range of benefits—you position your organization for greater efficiency, enhanced employee satisfaction, and robust data security.

Krista easily integrates with your existing systems, provides role-specific and contextually accurate answers, and ensures compliance through advanced security measures. By automating the management of policies and procedures, Krista not only saves time but also empowers your employees with the information they need to succeed.

The benefits are clear: faster response times, reduced workload for HR and management teams, improved employee engagement, and secure, consistent information delivery. Krista is more than just an AI assistant—it’s a comprehensive solution that drives real business outcomes.

We encourage you to take the next steps toward implementing Krista in your organization. Discover how Krista can transform your policy management, boost efficiency, and enhance employee satisfaction. Start your AI journey today with Krista and see real business outcomes.

Get Started Today

Ready to transform your policy and procedure management with Krista? Don’t wait—schedule a demo today to see how easily you can implement this powerful AI assistant in your organization. Click here to take the first step toward enhanced efficiency and productivity.