5 benefits of conversational AI search for professional services firms

In professional services, knowledge is power, and it’s your product. How quickly, accurately, and securely that knowledge is delivered defines your clients’ experience.

But knowledge is often trapped in multiple, siloed content sources across professional service websites. Most traditional search tools struggle to resolve this complexity, often returning either too much or too little. Fifteen pages of search results on AI, or zero results on AI and copyright as a combined search are not uncommon.

Take this example: a consultant searches for “ESG and financial services”. They receive dozens of results mentioning “ESG” and “financial services” across insights, press releases, website bios, but zero results providing the overview they were looking for.

Worse, if a prospective client asks for that example in a meeting and it can’t be surfaced instantly through your website, it undermines trust and delays progression of the client relationship. Internally, staff lose hours chasing information across sources or escalating to colleagues, delaying higher-value work in the process. The outcome is lower client response time, inconsistent service, and missed opportunities. Overall client experience drops, and your competition takes advantage.

Enter conversational AI search: an intelligent search solution that delivers precise, natural language answers on your website, drawn directly from your own content. Whether it’s AI search for law firms, consulting firms, or accounting practices, the goal is the same: to surface the right knowledge, faster, and with less effort for your clients, keeping them on your website.

Skip ahead:

• What is conversational AI search (and why now)?
• 5 Benefits of conversational AI search for professional services
  • 1. Instant access to firm knowledge through quick answers
  • 2. Safe, scoped access to sensitive content
  • 3. Higher productivity across teams
  • 4. Easy integration with your tech stack
  • 5. Better client experiences
• Your next steps

Conversational AI search is the next evolution of enterprise website search, mirroring how professionals and clients actually ask questions and seek information. It allows your clients to search for content on your website across multiple sources, with a unified conversational response.

Unlike traditional search, which relies on keywords and filters, conversational search allows users to ask natural-language questions like: “Who leads your corporate practice?” or “Has your firm advised on cross-border M&A in the energy sector?”.

This makes it the ideal tool to drive smooth client experience, and ideal as an internal communication tool across your intranet. You could use it to surface:

• Answers on specific macro and micro themes across website content that are most relevant to your clients
• Provide an overview of your experience advising on a particular area of law or advisory servicePartner and capability discovery
• Answer staff queries on your intranet relating to internal HR policy positions
• Act as an internal search function to identify pitch and proposal content
• Streamlining onboarding for new hires, providing them with a platform to ask common new starter questions

Squiz’s Conversational AI search uses a multi-step framework to answer your questions. It’s known as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), which in short means it’s looking across multiple sources to provide you with a comprehensive answer.

Here’s how that works:

• First, it pulls relevant content from your firm’s approved sources, like FAQs, bios, case studies, internal reports, or published insights - whatever sources you decide you want to provide to it.
• Second, an AI model generates a draft answer based only on that material - unlike external AI search platforms, Conversational Search won’t look for an answer anywhere that you haven’t told it to.
• Then, another AI model reviews the response to check for accuracy and ensure nothing is misinterpreted and there are no hallucinations - we know this is important for all organizations, but particularly key for professional service businesses.
• Finally, the user sees a clear, trustworthy answer, complete with links back to the original sources for transparency.

This approach ensures that every response is grounded in your own content and stays within defined guardrails. For more detailed information on what conversational AI search is and how RAG works, check out this blog.

So why now?

Because the way people search and expect to find information has changed. Clients use voice assistants and AI tools every day. Staff are under pressure to deliver answers faster, with fewer resources. At the same time, firms are swimming in content that’s hard to navigate and even harder to leverage consistently. We’re all using AI for quick searches in our day-to-day lives. Perhaps you use Google to search and term, but jump onto an AI search platform to find more detail on specific questions.

Professional service firms that provide humanistic and natural client experiences on their websites, as AI does for us in our personal lives, will be providing the strongest initial client experience possible.

Firms that adopt conversational search early don’t just get a new interface, they get a competitive advantage:

• Faster insight delivery for staff
• Smarter self-service for clients
• Better visibility into what people are actually looking for from your website and services - you’re able to gain insight from search terms, adjust your marketing strategy, and have business development assist your Partners in reaching out where it matters the most

In an industry where knowledge is everything, the ability to surface it faster and more effectively is a strategic imperative.

Conversational search platforms offer professional service firms a smarter, faster, and more secure way to access and deliver knowledge, both internally and externally. Key benefits include:

Turn dense documents such as contracts, policies, templates, or pitch decks into searchable assets. Instead of digging through individual documents, folders or intranets, users can ask natural questions and get immediate, actionable answers.

For example, rather than clicking through folder trees, staff can simply ask: “Do we have a standard NDA template for US clients?” or “Who manages our relationship with the Common Bank?”

This helps:

• Eliminate repeated manual lookups
• Reduce duplication of effort
• Accelerate task completion and client delivery

Enable firm-wide knowledge access without compromising client trust. Security and confidentiality are non-negotiable in professional services, so Squiz Conversational AI Search was built with these principles in mind:

• It only retrieves content from sources you explicitly approve
• Data is never used to train public models
• All answers are link-backed and auditable

This makes it suitable for even the most regulated environments, including legal, accounting, and government-facing organizations.

Businesses that implement conversational AI search see improvements in client experience and efficiency:

• Enhanced client experience and satisfaction: Clients receive immediate, clear answers to common subject matter questions, without needing to navigate dense articles. Clients will find the information they need across a range of sources on your website, packaged into one conversational response.
• Help prospective clients find the right partner or specialist: Prospective clients can easily locate the most relevant specialist for their needs, ensuring they connect with the right expertise from the start. For example, questions such as “what experience do you have advising on M&A deals” would surface lawyers with the right experience, experience statements on your website, and relevant articles and press releases to paint the full picture for your clients.
• Knowledge is more accessible and actionable: Team members can reduce their reliance on peers, speeding up training processes such as onboarding.
• Strategic time saving: Less time looking for the right information equals more time to spend on billable or strategic client work that directly impacts your bottom line.
• Drive traffic with data-driven insights: Each search reveals what clients want to know, helping you identify content gaps, improve your website, and optimize content with real user insights.

For legal teams, conversational search platforms serve as highly effective lawyer productivity tools, functioning as legal document search AI that makes it easy to retrieve case law, contracts, or compliance materials in seconds.

Instead of spending hours searching across multiple repositories, a lawyer can ask, “Do we have a precedent for a cross-border SaaS agreement under US law?”, and get an instant, consolidated answer in seconds, saving time and surfacing insights they might otherwise miss.

Squiz Conversational AI Search doesn’t require a major overhaul. It is designed to integrate with your existing systems, and it works within our own powerful Digital Experience Platform. You might integrate with:

• Document management platforms
• CMS tools like WordPress, Drupal
• Internal knowledge bases or intranets
• CRM and practice management systems (via custom integration where required)

You can deploy it as an overlay, embedded module, or widget on your public site or intranet with minimal disruption. Many configurations can be managed through a low-code interface, giving business users control over content scope and response tuning without needing deep IT involvement.

Conversational AI search doesn’t just benefit your internal teams, it also improves how clients engage with your firm:

• Self-service portals become more intuitive and responsive
• Clients get immediate, accurate answers without needing to call or wait for an email
• Business development teams gain insight into what prospects are actively searching for
• Partners can align outreach or service offerings to real-time client interests

If a prospective client exploring your website asks, “Do you have experience advising on cross-border tax issues for tech startups?”, instead of navigating multiple pages, getting confused and potentially having to wait for a Partner to contact them, they will receive a tailored, conversational response complete with relevant bios, case studies, and articles.

Ultimately, a better experience on your website translates into better service, deeper trust, and increased client retention.

Ready to understand how this conversational AI search could transform your website?

Let’s explore how Squiz Conversational AI Search feature (powered by Squiz Funnelback Search) can boost client engagement, improve satisfaction, and reduce support load while keeping you in full control of the experience.