Before signing a two-year AI customer-service contract, ask what you get back
The AI customer-service tool your office manager likes comes with a two-year contract. Before anyone signs, ask what you get back if you leave.
Over the first months, your staff will put real work into it. They will load your price list and service areas, write the answers to the questions customers ask every week, and set the rules for when a call goes to a person. That work is what makes the tool useful to your business, and it is the hardest part to rebuild.
Find the clause on data ownership, then check whether it covers the answers and rules your team wrote as well as the customer records.
Three questions cover the rest. Where do those things live, and who owns them under this contract? In what form do you get them back, and how quickly after notice? What will the renewal price depend on, once leaving means rebuilding all of it?
You can test the first two during the trial. Ask for an export of everything your team has set up, and open it. If nobody can make sense of the file, you have learned what leaving costs while there is still time to negotiate.