About BQE Software
BQE Software is a leading provider of cloud-based business management solutions for architecture, engineering, and professional services firms. Founded in 1995 and headquartered in Torrance, California, BQE has spent over three decades helping project-based businesses run more efficiently.
Their flagship product, BQE CORE, is an all-in-one platform that handles everything from project management and time tracking to billing, accounting, and HR—serving thousands of firms and tens of thousands of users who process billions in annual invoice volume. With a customer-obsessed culture and 24/7/365 support, BQE continuously innovates to help professional services firms succeed.
The Challenge
BQE CORE is a comprehensive platform with extensive functionality spanning time & expense tracking, project management, billing, accounting, HR, CRM, payroll, and API integrations. As the platform continues to evolve to serve increasingly sophisticated customers, the need for accessible, immediate support has grown alongside it.
While BQE already had a robust help center, they wanted to provide customers with a more immediate, conversational way to get answers—one that could handle the nuanced, product-specific questions that arise when navigating a powerful ERP system.
BQE needed a solution that could:
- Provide instant, accurate answers to product questions around the clock
- Maintain strict compliance with BQE’s user permission models and feature-specific guidance
- Never assume or generalize when information wasn’t explicitly covered in documentation
- Complement their existing help center with an interactive, conversational experience
The Solution: A Phased AI Strategy
BQE partnered with CustomGPT.ai to build an AI-powered customer experience in 2023, starting with help desk support and expanding into technical support and then sales & marketing. Their approach demonstrates how organizations can start with a focused use case, prove value, and then expand AI into additional areas of the business.
Phase 1: Product Support (Live)
BQE’s AI journey began with the BQE CORE AI Assistant, a context-restricted, highly professional chatbot deployed within their online help center as well as available in-app via their Resource Center. Powered by CustomGPT.ai’s API, the assistant delivers intelligent responses drawn from verified, tightly scoped documentation.
The AI Assistant handles questions across BQE CORE’s full functionality:
- Permissions and security settings
- Time & expense approvals and workflows
- Project and phase structures
- Invoice handling and refunds
- CORE API structure and usage
- UI filters and navigation
Later in 2023, BQE expanded their deployments, introducing a further-specialized AI assistant, a chatbot deployed on their API documentation site focused on answering questions about their public APIs.
Enterprise-grade guardrails ensure the assistant refuses out-of-scope questions, never assumes missing context, and reliably routes users to account managers for package-specific inquiries—maintaining the professional, accurate experience BQE’s customers expect.
Phase 2: Website Marketing & Sales Chatbot (Live)
Building on the success of their support assistants, BQE expanded their AI footprint to the public website with an intelligent website chatbot. This assistant helps prospective customers and visitors navigate BQE’s solutions, answer questions about capabilities, and find the resources they need.
The chatbot provides a conversational entry point for visitors exploring BQE CORE, helping them understand how the platform addresses their specific needs and guiding them to relevant information.
Phase 3: Expanding AI Across the Business (In Progress)
With 3 successful AI deployments in production, BQE is now exploring additional ways to leverage AI within their existing workflows. The team is evaluating opportunities to enhance the customer experience, improve internal efficiency, and surface insights from customer interactions.
The Results
BQE’s phased approach to AI has delivered measurable impact:
- 86% AI resolution rate
- 180,000 Support questions answered
- 64% of Help Center queries handled by AI
Use Cases
- Product Support: Instant answers to product questions, troubleshooting, and feature guidance via the help center chatbot and in-app resource center chatbots.
- Website Marketing & Sales Chatbot: Guiding prospective customers through BQE’s offerings and helping them find the information they need.
Improved Customer Experience
The AI assistants complement BQE’s existing support infrastructure, providing customers with an additional way to get answers instantly. At over 100,000 queries annually, the support assistant alone represents a meaningful channel for customer engagement.
The documentation team uses the assistant’s analytics to identify patterns in customer questions and continuously improve their knowledge base—creating a virtuous cycle of better self-service outcomes across all channels.
What’s Next
With the support assistant and website copilot now live, BQE continues to explore how AI can enhance their customer experience further. The team is focused on finding practical ways to make it easier for customers to get value from the platform and find the resources they need.
Areas of continued exploration include:
- Exploring new models and options for the chatbot to find the best balance between accuracy, relevance and speed in responding to the customer queries.
- Using customer interaction insights automatically gathered within the CustomGPT-powered platform to improve documentation and support resources.
BQE’s phased approach—starting with support and expanding to the website—demonstrates how organizations can build AI capabilities incrementally while delivering value at each step.
