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Unanswered questions: what knowledge to add
Short answer
Questions the company assistant cannot answer show what is missing from the knowledge base. The knowledge owner groups them by the shared gap, prepares one piece of material with the experts and checks with users whether the questions stop coming back. At Syntalith an AI app on company documents costs from €3,000 net. At 300 expert questions a month with 15 minutes of searching each, it pays back in 1.4 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net per application, fixed price before contract
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 4–10 weeks
- free prototype on your documents
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
AI knowledge bases: statistics 2026
1.4 mo.
payback of a €3,000 app at 300 expert questions a month: €2,618 of searching today, €398 with the app. Scenario.
49%
According to Anthropic (2024), combining contextual embeddings with BM25 search cut the number of failed retrievals by 49%.
48%
According to the European Commission (2026), 48% of EU SMEs and mid-caps name a lack of expertise as a barrier to AI.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
30%
According to Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond (2025), less experienced agents with AI raised the number of issues resolved an hour by 30%.
Source: Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond, The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2025) ↗
62%
According to Microsoft (2023), 62% of workers struggle with too much time spent searching for information.
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
Different unanswered questions, the same gap
Employees ask what to hand over to a colleague before a holiday, where to describe open cases and how to name a stand-in. The assistant finds a general organisational page, and it says nothing on how to prepare a hand-over of work. Each question goes to an expert separately, and the report shows only “no answer”.
- 01Recordthe question and what the user could not do
- 02Groupthe shared gap behind different questions
- 03Materiala guide prepared with the experts
- 04Checkusers do the task after the change
The number of similar questions shows repetition, and what also counts is the work the missing explanation blocks, because a rare question can concern a hard task. The company decides who may read conversations and which details to leave out: an expert does not need a user's history to prepare general material.
What an AI knowledge base costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 300 expert questions × 15 min = 75 h × €34.90 = €2,618
- With the system, a person checks the output in 15% of the time
- €393
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €5
- Cost of one case
- €8.73 today, €1.33 with the system
- Saving
- €2,220 a month
Payback of €3,000
1.4 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 6,000 input tokens and 500 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro.
The model is a small item here. What decides the result is the time searching and asking around takes today, and how much of it is left for checking the answer. In the scenario we count the experts' time spent on answers that should be in the knowledge base. Once the material is added, that part of the work falls, and what remains is reviewing new questions.
Before pricing the build we run a test on 20 to 100 questions the team has already asked: we compare the app's answer with what an employee found by hand and count the time from question to source. The test takes 5 working days and costs €0.
Your current platform may already show unanswered questions
Microsoft describes, in Copilot Studio, a review of questions, answers, sources and user reactions. If you have a list of requests for the knowledge base and its owner reviews it regularly, connecting it to the reports is enough. Your own app is justified when questions are spread across the assistant, the messenger and email, and the owner cannot see them together.
The platform shows unanswered questions
a regular review of the report
within the licence
A list of knowledge base requests already exists
linking the list to the reports
configuration
Questions in several channels
a view of recurring questions for the owner
from €3,000
Where to start
The first scope covers questions from one area that experts keep explaining again. For the call, bring the topic that has come back to experts most often lately.
For the first call, one question that regularly goes back to colleagues and a note on where the team looks for answers are enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: answers from company documents
We run the same count for your documents in the free process review.
€3,723
a month for finding answers to 800 questions in documents
Payback: 1 mo.
Our assumptions are 8 minutes to find an answer in documents or ask a colleague, and checking in 15% of the old time. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 6,000 + 500 tokens per answer from documents, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
