Evaluation guide
Evaluate the operating system around the AI—not only the demo.
A fluent demo does not prove a safe, reliable customer workflow. Use these questions to evaluate product fit, governance, integration, data, cost, release control, and human accountability.
Direct answer
How should a team evaluate an AI customer-conversation platform?
Evaluate the complete operating workflow: customer intent, approved outcome, knowledge authority, allowed actions, human handoff, privacy, security, reliability, variable cost, release control, and recovery. A fluent demo is useful, but it does not prove that the workflow remains safe when data, providers, or conditions change.
1. Define the customer workflow
- What customer intent is in scope?
- What is the approved successful outcome?
- Which exceptions are out of scope?
- Who owns the customer commitment?
- What does a safe stop look like?
2. Separate knowledge from actions
- Where do approved answers come from?
- How are sources reviewed and withdrawn?
- Which actions are explicitly allowed?
- How are duplicate effects prevented?
- Can untrusted text choose a tool or URL?
3. Design human handoff
- What conditions require a person?
- Who receives the handoff?
- What context is necessary?
- What expectation is set?
- How is the outcome recorded?
4. Review privacy and security
- How is tenant authority derived?
- What data is collected and retained?
- Which providers receive which fields?
- How are logs, secrets, backups, and support controlled?
- What live evidence supports each claim?
5. Understand cost
- What is capacity versus usage?
- How do destination, provider, model, tax, and currency affect price?
- How is spend reserved?
- What happens when rates are stale?
- How is retained revenue verified?
6. Demand release and recovery evidence
- What source, artifact, schema, config, and provider identities are live?
- Can live readback prove them?
- What compensates partial deployment?
- How are backups restored?
- Which claims remain unproved?
7. Choose a bounded first evaluation
Select one workflow with stable knowledge, low-risk actions, clear human ownership, measurable volume, a realistic failure test, and rollback. Define the baseline before observing results.
Common questions
Answers for a practical evaluation.
What is the most important evaluation question?
Ask what the system is authorized to know and do, and what happens when it is uncertain, wrong, unavailable, or out of scope.
Is a successful demo enough for production?
No. Production needs authority, data, security, integration, cost, failure, release, recovery, and live readback evidence.
How large should a first evaluation be?
Use a bounded workflow sufficient to expose realistic failures, costs, handoffs, and operational ownership.
Continue exploring
Related CXRove guidance.
Next action
Turn a customer conversation into a completed next step.
Choose an Agent capacity, define the first workflow, and decide what the Agent may know, do, and hand to a person.