How to Ask Your First Question

The main AI chat bar is at /ask in the left sidebar. You can also ask questions from three other places: tap any metric in your Daily Brief to ask a follow-up ('Why did this change?'), click the Ask AskBiz button on any Intelligence dashboard panel to ask about that specific metric, and click Ask about this on any Business Tool result card (FX Risk Modeller, Landed Cost Calculator, etc.) to dig deeper into your results.

If you are not sure where to begin, these five questions work well for any business connected to at least one data source:

• *'What were my top 5 products by revenue last month?'*
• *'How did my gross margin change year on year?'*
• *'Which customers have not bought in the last 90 days?'*
• *'What is my average order value trend over the last 6 months?'*
• *'Where is most of my revenue coming from right now?'*

Each answer will naturally lead to follow-up questions — AskBiz remembers the context of your conversation, so you can ask 'why?' or 'show me just for Shopify' and it will understand the reference.

AskBiz excels at questions that are grounded in your connected data. The more specific you are, the better the answer. Examples:

• Trend questions: 'Is my conversion rate improving or declining this quarter?'
• Ranking questions: 'Which three channels have the lowest return on ad spend?'
• Comparison questions: 'How does this month compare to the same month last year?'
• Diagnosis questions: 'Why did my average order value drop last week?'
• Forecast questions: 'Based on current trends, will I hit my monthly revenue target?'

AskBiz also answers general business questions: 'What does contribution margin mean?' or 'How do I calculate inventory turnover?' — drawing on its built-in knowledge rather than your data.

When you type certain phrases, AskBiz automatically opens the right specialist tool instead of a plain text answer:

• Mention export markets or a specific country → Export Market Scoring tool opens
• Mention FX, exchange rate, or currency risk → FX Risk Modeller opens
• Mention landed cost, duty, or import cost → Landed Cost Calculator opens
• Mention churn, at-risk customers, or customer loss → Churn Intelligence opens
• Mention TikTok, Instagram trends, or social commerce → Social Commerce tool opens

You can also open any tool directly from the sidebar without going through the chat.

• Be specific about timeframes: 'last 30 days' or 'Q3 this year' beats 'recently'
• Name products or channels when asking about something specific: 'What is the return rate for my Merino Wool Jumper on Amazon?'
• Ask follow-up questions — AskBiz keeps context throughout the conversation: after asking about revenue, you can say 'break that down by channel' without repeating yourself
• Connect more data — richer data = richer answers. A business with Shopify, Xero, and Amazon connected gets far more detailed answers than one with a single source
• Use plain English — no jargon or SQL needed. Speak naturally and AskBiz will interpret the intent

Every AskBiz answer includes: the direct response to your question, the data source and date range it used to generate the answer, and a confidence indicator (High, Medium, or Low) that reflects how much data the model had available. Always check the data source note — if the answer says 'based on Shopify data only' and you also sell on Amazon, the answer is not showing your full picture. Ask 'include all channels' to get a combined view.