Xero Adds GenAI-Driven Search Function

Xero, a maker of small business management and accounting tools, has implemented a generative AI (GenAI) solution in Xero Central to help deliver accurate support answers faster for its millions of customers and users.

In partnership with Coveo and powered by GenAI, generated answers are available in Xero Central – Xero’s customer support and learning site – and the feature is just one of Xero’s GenAI experiments announced recently at Xerocon Sydney. Xero’s recent Future Focus AI research also found that small businesses believe that support systems (customer service, chatbox and help desk tools) will be the second biggest area (36%) impacted by AI in the next five years, only behind content creation at 38%.

The use of GenAI-driven search in Xero Central leverages Coveo’s platform and works by integrating generative answers so when customers enter a search term or question, they will receive an answer as well as a list of other relevant content articles. The answers are generated from Xero’s extensive support content articles, written by the Xero team. Customers get the information they need faster, as they don’t have to keep scrolling through content to find the relevant articles they need. Customers can also filter their searches – based on whether they are a small business, or an accountant or bookkeeper – to get the most relevant answers.

Nigel Piper, Executive General Manager – Customer Experience at Xero said: “Xero strives to be at the forefront of innovative customer experience, and this is a significant step towards our goal to build a support model which brings together the best of digital experiences powered by human capability. It’s really about making it as simple and intuitive as possible for customers – whether they’re small businesses or accountants and bookkeepers – to find the information they need to solve their problem so they can get back to running their business or supporting their clients.

“The feedback we’re getting already on the generated answers has been hugely positive. We understand customers like to have a choice too, so customers can continue to raise a support case for one-on-one assistance, or request a phone call from one of our hundreds of customer support specialists based around the world, if that is their preference.”

Louis Tetu, CEO and Chairman at Coveo, said: “Xero understood early the AI-experience advantage when it comes to creating a best-in-class customer experience. Xero is a forward-thinking organization, together we are exploring the possibilities that semantic search and GenAI can bring – or will bring – to digital experiences.”

Recently, Xero also rolled out more powerful, AI-powered bank reconciliation to all Xero customers globally, following the announcement at Xerocon Sydney. This means that AI is now being used to recognise and predict new contacts in customers’ statement lines even without having the business names in their contact list, which can reduce manual data entry and further save customers time. This is in addition to Xero already being able to use AI to predict a contact and account code for transactions only where the business already had a relevant contact.

There are a number of other areas AI already powers across Xero beyond bank reconciliation and Xero Central. It’s embedded in products like Hubdoc (with document capture and data entry), Xero Expenses, Xero Go, and cash flow forecasting in Xero Analytics Plus.

Xero customers can try the GenAI-driven search today in Xero Central search.