A product's Discord fills up with three kinds of question. How do I set this up? Why was I charged twice? Is the export bug just me? The first two are usually answered in your help docs already. The third is answered in a status post someone wrote this morning. Your team answers all three, by hand, over and over.
Ascend AI answers those from the documents you give it, in the channels you pick, and hands anything that needs an account, a refund or an engineer to your team. This post covers how a product or SaaS community sets it up, with an invented product, Loomline, as the example.
Which questions can a Discord bot answer for a software product?
Anything that has the same answer for every customer. Setup steps, plan differences, how billing dates work, where to find an invoice, what an error message means, and whether a known issue is being fixed. If it's written in your help centre, the bot can answer it in Discord.
What it can't answer is anything that depends on one customer's account. Ascend AI does not connect to your product, your billing system or your customer records. It can tell a member how refunds work; it can't see whether theirs went through. Those questions go to a person, and the setup below makes that hand-off clean.
How do you turn help docs into a Discord knowledge base?
Open Knowledge base and add documents. Paste Markdown, or Upload a Markdown, text or PDF file and it becomes a document. If your help centre exports to Markdown or PDF, start there. Keep one topic per document: the bot looks up the passages that match a question rather than reading whole files, so "Billing dates and invoices" answers better than "Help centre (all)".
For Loomline, the first set looks like this:
- Getting started: install, sign-in, the first project.
- Plans and billing: what each plan includes, when you're charged, how to change plan, where invoices live, the refund policy.
- Integrations: one document per integration, each with its setup steps.
- Known issues: what's broken, the workaround, and where fixes are announced.
How do you keep it from guessing about billing?
Set it to Strict on the Knowledge base page. On Strict it answers only from your documents and reference channels, and anything else gets "I don't have that here". For a product community, where a member might quote the bot's answer back to your billing team, that is the setting to start on.
Two more habits help. When a known issue is fixed, switch its document off rather than deleting it; you may need it again. And when the billing policy changes, edit the document: every edit keeps the version before it, and you can restore one from the document's menu.
How does it hand questions to your support team?
When your documents don't cover a question, Ascend AI says so rather than guess, and points the member to your Support channel if you set one. It also posts notices in your Mod channel, including the questions it handed over, so your team sees them without reading every channel.
For questions that involve an account, a private thread is better than a public channel. Switch on Support tickets in Modules: members open a private support thread from a panel, your staff claim it and close it, and the transcript is kept. Ticket categories (Billing, Bug report, Account access) let the member say what it's about up front.
- Answerable from docs: the bot answers in the channel.
- Not in the docs: the bot says so and points to the support channel.
- About one customer's account: the member opens a ticket and your team takes it from there.
How does the knowledge base get better over time?
Two places to look. Conversations keeps each question a member asked, the reply, and how it got there. A week of it shows you which questions your docs don't cover yet.
Learn from mod answers does part of that for you. When one of your team answers a question the bot couldn't, it asks your admins whether to save that answer to the knowledge base. An admin approves it or doesn't; nothing is added on its own. Over time the answers your support team types once become answers the bot can give.
Can your team manage it without opening another dashboard?
Yes, for most day-to-day changes. Admins mention Ascend AI and say what they want: "add this to the docs: the March release moved exports to the File menu", "answer in #integrations too", "show me the current settings". Only the server owner and members with Administrator or Manage Server can, and that check is made in code on every message, so a member can't talk it into changing anything.
The dashboard is still there for switching modules on, billing, and reading the conversations log. See Manage it by chat in the docs.
Who can ask, and how do you keep a busy server in budget?
On Channels, Who can ask limits asking to the roles you tick. A product community might limit it to a Customers role, or leave it open to everyone evaluating the product. Questions per member per day keeps one member from using up the server's questions.
Plans are per server, not per seat. Community is $9 a month or $90 a year. Pro is $20 a month or $200 a year. Enterprise starts from $149 a month, billed annually. Each plan includes a monthly number of questions, and the bot warns your mod channel as you get close. There is no free trial.
If you run several servers, need invoice billing, or have a very large community, Enterprise starts from $149 a month, billed annually, and is set up with you rather than bought from the dashboard. The pricing table compares the plans.
A starting setup for a product community
- Add Ascend AI and pick a plan on Billing.
- Upload getting-started, billing, integration and known-issue documents.
- Add #status or #announcements as a reference channel.
- Set the knowledge base to Strict.
- Turn on #help in Answers mode.
- Set a support channel and a mod channel.
- Switch on Support tickets with a Billing category, and Learn from mod answers.
The step-by-step setup guide covers each step in more detail.
Questions
Can the bot look up a customer's account or invoice?
No. Ascend AI does not connect to your product or billing system. It answers from the documents and channels you give it, and account-specific questions go to your team through a support channel or a private ticket.
Can I upload my existing help centre?
You can paste Markdown or upload Markdown, text or PDF files, and each becomes a document. One topic per document gives sharper answers. Your plan sets how many documents and how much text the knowledge base holds.
How quickly does it pick up a changed document?
A new or edited document is used from the next message. Reference channels, such as a status channel, are refreshed every few minutes.
What happens to questions it can't answer?
It says it doesn't have that rather than guess, points the member to your support channel if you set one, and posts a notice in your mod channel. With Learn from mod answers on, a mod's answer can be saved to the knowledge base once an admin approves it.
Is there a plan for several servers?
Enterprise covers several servers on one subscription, very large servers and invoice billing. It starts from $149 a month, billed annually.
