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B2B customer portal, regulated industry · 2026

An AI assistant that shows its sources

UX consulting for a customer companion: when to answer, how to cite, when to hand over to a human.

Toggle the patterns to compare a generic answer with one that cites its sources, states its certainty and offers a human.

Customer companion

Why is my invoice for September higher than in August?

Your September invoice is 12% higher mainly because the monthly price index in your contract rose. Consumption stayed nearly the same.

Certainty: high – based on your contract and invoice

Sources

  • [1]Contract §4 Price index
  • [2]Invoice 09/2026, line 3
  • [3]Consumption Aug–Sep
Why this answer?

I compared both invoices line by line. The difference comes from line 3 (index price). Line 1 (consumption) changed by less than 1%.

Context

A customer portal for business clients wanted an AI companion that answers questions about contracts, invoices and market data.

Challenge

In a regulated domain a wrong answer is worse than no answer. Users needed to see where an answer comes from and how certain it is – without drowning in disclaimers.

Approach

  1. Mapped the questions customers really ask and sorted them into answer, guide or hand over.
  2. Defined trust patterns: inline sources, a plain-language certainty label, a visible path to a human.
  3. Wrote a domain glossary so the assistant and the UI use the same words.
  4. Prototyped the conversation states and tested them with internal users.

Outcome

  • A shared target picture for product, legal and engineering.
  • Reusable interaction patterns for answers with sources and for hand-over.
  • A glossary that also feeds the assistant's prompts.

My role

UX consultant for the assistant concept and interaction patterns