Plain-English answers to the questions executives actually ask.

No. The value isn't the chat interface — it's the structured capture of experience, judgment, and unwritten knowledge that came before it. The chat is just the easiest way for a successor to retrieve answers later. Without the structured capture, a chatbot has nothing useful to draw from.

No. It supports training by preserving knowledge that would otherwise be lost or inconsistently transferred. Training teaches the official process; KeyPersonAI captures what experienced people do when the official process doesn't fit.

No. SOPs document the official process. KeyPersonAI captures the exceptions, judgment calls, relationships, and lessons that SOPs usually miss. The two complement each other — and the engagement often produces a list of specific SOP improvements as a byproduct.

Yes. Succession planning is one of the strongest use cases — particularly for retiring owners, family business transitions, and senior managers stepping back. The captured knowledge becomes part of the handoff package the successor inherits.

Yes. New employees often struggle most with the unwritten knowledge — the context, the exceptions, the relationships, the warning signs experienced people notice. A captured knowledge base gives them something to ask when there isn't a person available to interrupt.

Most single-person engagements run four to six weeks from kickoff to final delivery. A typical timeline:

• Week 1 — scoping call, document review, and interview plan
• Weeks 2–4 — guided interview sessions on the key person's schedule
• Weeks 4–5 — processing, structuring, and gap detection
• Weeks 5–6 — customer review, revisions, and final delivery

The timeline can compress to two weeks for urgent transitions, or extend to eight to twelve weeks for roles with broad scope or sensitive material.

Typically eight to fifteen hours total across the engagement. Sessions are 30 to 60 minutes, scheduled one or two per week around the person's availability. Most key people find the cadence sustainable — long enough between sessions to reflect, short enough that momentum doesn't drop.

Document review and any optional written responses happen on the person's own time and don't count against the session hours.

All three are supported. Most engagements lead with voice — recorded interviews over Zoom, phone, or in person — because tone, hesitation, and the way someone explains a story carry information that written text doesn't.

We also accept:

• Written responses for topics the person prefers to think through on paper
• Video where the person wants to demonstrate equipment, walk a physical space, or show how something is done
• Documents — existing SOPs, manuals, notes, customer lists, vendor records — reviewed up front so interviews focus on what's missing rather than re-covering what's already written

Most engagements use a combination of voice and document review.

Most are live, by Zoom or phone. Live conversations allow adaptive follow-up — when an answer is vague, skips an exception, or mentions an unnamed person, we ask the right clarification in real time. We also support fully asynchronous engagements for situations where live scheduling is difficult, with a longer overall timeline.

Scope is chosen during the planning call. Categories you can include or exclude:

• Operational processes and exceptions
• Customer relationships, history, and preferences
• Vendor relationships and informal commitments
• Decision rules and judgment under pressure
• Pricing logic, exceptions, and financial reasoning
• Equipment, systems, or industry-specific knowledge
• Critical incidents and lessons learned
• Warning signs, recurring risks, and early indicators
• Internal relationships, advisors, escalation paths
• Compliance, regulatory, and safety knowledge
• Cultural and historical context
• Strategic context and competitive history
• Successor advice and transition guidance

Most engagements cover six to eight of these. The customer decides which.

The default scope is business, role, and professional knowledge. We don't ask about the key person's personal life unless the customer specifically wants the engagement to include it.

Some retiring owners and family-business founders do choose to include mentorship-style content — founder history, leadership philosophy, lessons from a long career, advice for the next generation. That's an option, not a default. If included, it's scoped explicitly in the engagement agreement.

We don't ask about life strategies, personal opinions outside the business, religious or political views, or family matters unless the customer has explicitly asked for that scope.

The customer does. Scope is set during the planning call and confirmed in the engagement agreement. Specific topics can be flagged for exclusion, restricted to certain reviewers, or held out for separate handling. Sensitive material is reviewed before broader access is granted, and can be redacted or removed at the customer's request.

Depth is tunable. A thorough capture covers each category through several layers — surface description, the reasoning behind it, exceptions and edge cases, lessons learned, and successor advice. A focused capture stays at the level the customer needs.

We tell you up front how many sessions a chosen depth implies so you can adjust before the engagement starts.

They don't. The interview process is conversational, not an interrogation. If a topic is sensitive, off-limits, or the person prefers to handle it differently, they say so and we move on. Nothing is captured without the key person's cooperation and the customer's review.

The process is designed to feel like a conversation, not a software task. The person can answer naturally — by voice or in writing — without learning new tools. Phone interviews are fully supported for anyone who'd rather not use Zoom. Structuring and organization happen on our side.

Almost nothing. We handle planning, scheduling, and interview structure. The key person should expect to:

• Be available for interview sessions on the agreed cadence
• Optionally point us to existing documents, files, or notes worth reviewing
• Optionally make a list of topics they want to be sure to cover

The customer typically handles the scoping call, though the key person can join if they prefer.

Start with the knowledge that would create the most disruption if the person were unavailable tomorrow. The scoping call helps identify the highest-risk areas — usually a mix of customer relationships, process exceptions, and equipment or system-specific judgment.

Yes. Existing SOPs, manuals, notes, checklists, vendor lists, customer files, training material, and other documents are reviewed at the start of the engagement so interviews focus on what's actually missing.

Yes — a key person's knowledge is usually scattered across years of working materials, and most of those can be submitted as input. Common categories:

• Written documents — SOPs, manuals, policies, training material, contracts, proposals, customer notes, vendor notes, spreadsheets, reports, pricing documents, org charts, project files, meeting notes, scanned handwritten notes, PDFs, Word/Excel/PowerPoint files
• Communications — emails and email threads, recorded phone calls, call transcripts, Zoom or meeting recordings, Slack/Teams exports (where appropriate), CRM notes, customer-service logs
• Audio & video — phone recordings, Zoom calls, Loom videos, training videos, screen recordings, walkthrough videos

All submitted materials are processed under the engagement's data-handling terms: confidential by design, access-controlled, encrypted in transit and at rest, reviewed before broader access, and excludable at the customer's discretion. Original recordings can be retained, restricted, or deleted after transcription and approval — the customer chooses.

Sensitive materials (privileged communications, regulated data, internal personnel records) should be flagged during the scoping call so the engagement can be structured to handle them appropriately.

The customer does. KeyPersonAI's role is to capture, organize, and make the knowledge usable under the agreed engagement terms. The customer retains ownership of the source materials they provide and of the approved knowledge base, playbook, and other deliverables produced from them.

At the end of an engagement, the customer receives:

• A searchable knowledge base authorized successors can query in plain English
• A Key Person Playbook covering role overview, processes, relationships, decisions, warnings, exceptions, and successor advice
• A 30 / 60 / 90-day successor guide
• A knowledge risk register showing what was captured and what remains at risk
• An SOP improvement list identifying where existing documentation is weak or out of date
• Exportable PDF and Word summaries for offline reference, board review, or transition documents

Yes. Engagements can be extended for additional depth on existing topics, capture of additional roles, or follow-up sessions once a successor has been in seat for a while and has new questions to ask.

Capture and structuring use AI, but engagements include human guidance — particularly during planning, sensitive-topic handling, and final review. Pure automation tends to miss the judgment calls that make this kind of knowledge valuable in the first place.

Your company does. The captured knowledge belongs to you. It is not shared with anyone outside the engagement and is not used to train AI models.

No. Captured interviews, documents, and knowledge are processed under enterprise terms that prohibit using your data to train models.

Yes. Sensitive topics can be flagged in advance, restricted to specific roles, or excluded entirely. Captured material is reviewed and approved before broader access is granted.

Access is controlled by your company. The customer portal supports role-based access so the right people see the right information — and sensitive sections can be limited to specific reviewers or excluded from broader visibility.

For law firms, professional services, and other engagements with confidentiality or privilege concerns, the engagement is scoped to respect those boundaries. Sensitive material can be excluded, redacted, or held under client agreement. Formal compliance arrangements can be discussed for larger deployments.

Yes. The final knowledge base allows authorized users to ask questions in plain English and receive answers drawn from the captured interviews and documents — with citations back to the source.

Yes. PDF and Word exports are available for the playbook, successor guide, and knowledge base summaries — useful for board review, transition documents, and offline reference.

Three engagement shapes: Single Person Capture, Team Capture, and Ongoing Knowledge Continuity Programs. Pricing is consultative and tailored to scope. The pricing page describes what's included in each.

The first conversation is a no-pressure scoping call to understand the role, the timeline, and whether KeyPersonAI is a fit. If a pilot is the right fit, that's typically a Single Person Capture.

Most companies frame the value in terms of preventing one repeated mistake, shortening one painful transition, preserving one important customer or vendor relationship, or avoiding one operational disruption. The specific value depends on the role and the situation — that's part of the scoping conversation.

Yes. Most engagements begin with a single key person. Companies often see the result and then add additional captures from there.

Yes. The Ongoing Program tier is designed for organizations that want knowledge capture to be a continuous process rather than a one-time project. Formal compliance arrangements and dedicated support can be discussed.