Ideal Customer

Settings → Ideal Customer describes who your business sells to: the industries your best customers are in, how big they are, where they are, who you deal with there, why they come to you, what makes them buy now, and who to leave out. It reads as one plain-English sentence, for example "Our best customers are building construction businesses with 2–10 staff in NSW or VIC."

Uncog AI can draft it for you, or tidy up your own description of your customers. Either way a person checks it: Uncog AI only uses the parts someone has confirmed, and anything it drafted stays a suggestion until then.

Every member can see the page. Only Owners, Admins and the Uncog AI onboarding team can change it, tidy it up or ask Uncog AI to draft it. Members see the sentence without the buttons, or "No ideal customer has been described yet." until someone has.

Start from a suggestion

The first time you open the page, it asks Who’s your best customer? Under Pick One to Start — You Can Change It, Uncog AI offers three kinds of customer that businesses in your industry usually sell to, for example "Finance managers at firms with 11–200 staff". Choose one and it's saved as your ideal customer straight away, with the people and business sizes it names. You can change every part of it afterwards.

The suggestions come from your industry. If you haven't said what your business does yet, the page asks What does your business do? first; it's saved with your business details, where you can also change it (Settings → Business Profile). To pick a different industry later, choose Change next to it. Only Owners, Admins and onboarding staff can set it.

Describe your customers in your own words

Or, under Or Say It Your Way:

Go to Settings → Ideal Customer.
In Describe them in your own words, write a few sentences about your best customers: who they are, where they are, how big they are and why they come to you. You can write up to 1,000 characters.
Choose Tidy It Up. Uncog AI reads your words and turns them into the sentence, with each part highlighted.
Check the sentence. If you named a place that isn't a state, such as a region or a town, the page says how Uncog AI read it, for example "Uncog read Gippsland as VIC".
Under Uncog Also Noticed, Uncog AI may suggest up to two things your customer records show that you didn't mention, for example "12 of your 30 customers are in QLD — add it?" or "9 of your 30 customers have 11–50 staff — add that?". Choose Add It or Leave It Out for each.
Choose Save. Everything you save counts as confirmed, because they're your own words.

To start again, choose Rewrite It instead of Save.

Uncog AI doesn't keep what you type. It reads it once to tidy it up and then forgets it; only the sentence you save is kept.

Let Uncog AI draft it

If you'd rather not write it yourself, choose Or Let Uncog Draft It From Your Knowledge on the first screen. The page shows a spinner while Uncog AI drafts. It usually takes about a minute, and the page shows the sentence on its own when it's ready. You can leave the page while it works. If the draft fails, the page says Uncog couldn’t draft your ideal customer: nothing was changed, and you can choose Try Again or describe your customers yourself.

Uncog AI drafts it from:

your Business Profile: your business name, website and state;
your Knowledge documents, including the ones only your team can see;
how many of your companies are marked as customers, and where they are, along with how many paid invoices they had in the last 12 months when Xero is connected.

It uses counts only. No customer's name, contact details or invoice goes into the draft.

Uncog AI also drafts it once on its own: when your first Knowledge document is ready, or when you have 10 companies marked as customers, whichever comes first. You then get a card on Home asking you to check it.

Check what Uncog AI drafted

Once there’s a draft, the page shows the sentence. Each part you can tap is underlined and coloured:

Yellow: Uncog AI drafted it and nobody has checked it yet.
Lime green: confirmed by your team.
Grey: empty, with a question such as "where?".

Above the sentence, a bar shows how much is confirmed, for example Confirmed 4 of 7. The line under it says whether Uncog AI uses it yet: it uses only the confirmed parts, so until a part is confirmed your ideal customer isn't used at all, and once all 7 are confirmed Uncog AI uses all of it.

Choose Check the Next One, or tap any part of the sentence. A window opens for that part (on a phone it slides up from the bottom of the screen).
The window shows what Uncog AI based it on, for example "31 of your 38 customers are in these places" or "From your knowledge: Services price list".
If it's right, choose That’s Right. If not, change it and choose Save. To take out an industry or a job function, choose the × on it. To turn off a business size or a place, choose it again: chosen ones are filled in with a tick.
The window moves on to the next yellow part, and closes once nothing is left to check. Choose Not Now to close it sooner.

The summary under In one sentence: is checked the same way: tap it, or choose Check Summary (Edit Summary once it's confirmed) in the … menu at the top right.

Parts already confirmed can be changed at any time: tap them, make the change and choose Save.

What each part holds

Industries: up to 8, chosen from a list of Australian industry categories, grouped by sector.
Business size: how many staff, from 1 up to 10,001 or more.
Where they are: up to 10 Australian states and territories, all of Australia, or other countries such as New Zealand.
Who you deal with: up to 3 kinds of people, each with a name you choose (such as "Owners and directors"), their job functions and their seniority.
Why they come to you and What makes them buy now: up to 5 short phrases each, in your words. The sentence shows the first one; the panel shows them all.
Who to leave out: industries, sizes or places to exclude. Companies marked as suppliers or partners are always left out. A LinkedIn campaign Uncog AI suggests leaves them out in LinkedIn too (see Business Pulse).

Redraft

Choose Redraft in the … menu at the top right to ask Uncog AI to draft it again, for example after adding new Knowledge documents. The page asks you to confirm first, because each redraft counts towards the day's drafts. A redraft only fills empty parts and parts that are still yellow. It never changes anything your team has confirmed.

Drafting and Tidy It Up together can be used 3 times a day. After that, the page says to try again tomorrow.

On your Home page

Describe your ideal customer is one of the setup steps on Home, after your business details (Owners and Admins). Choose Describe Them to open the page. Before you have one, and when your business details have a website, the card's main button is Read My Website: it adds your website to Knowledge, and once it is read Uncog AI drafts your ideal customer from it. The step is done once industries, business size, where they are and who you deal with are confirmed, and nothing Uncog AI drafted is left unchecked. Accounts that finished setup before this step was added don't get it.
When Uncog AI has drafted something nobody has checked yet, a Suggestion · from Uncog card says "Uncog drafted who your ideal customers are — check it". Choose Review to open the page on the first yellow part. Like other suggestions, Later puts it away for a week, once. After a redraft that changes something, the card comes back.
When Uncog AI suggests a change to your ideal customer, a Suggestion · from Uncog card asks, for example, "Add Construction services to your ideal customer?". See "Changes Uncog AI suggests" below.

See Your Home Page.

Changes Uncog AI suggests

Once a week, on Monday morning, Uncog AI compares your ideal customer with the customers you've won in the last 90 days: companies marked as customers that were added in that time, or that paid their first invoice in it (from a connected tool such as Xero). Suppliers and partners don't count.

It only looks at the industries, business size and places you've confirmed. A part that is still yellow, or empty, never gets a suggestion. It suggests:

adding something, when at least 3 of your new customers share it and they're at least 3 in 10 of the new customers it knows that detail for, for example "Add QLD to your ideal customer? 4 of your 9 new customers in the last 90 days match it." It never suggests something you've put under Who to leave out, or anything for a list that is already full, and if you've chosen all of Australia it never suggests a state;
taking something off, when none of at least 10 new customers match it, for example "Take NSW off your ideal customer? None of your 12 new customers in the last 90 days match it." It never suggests emptying a list.

Each suggestion is a card on Home, for Owners, Admins and the Uncog AI onboarding team:

Accept makes the change, as if you'd made it yourself, and every company's fit is rated again.
Edit opens Settings → Ideal Customer on that part, so you can change it your own way.
Dismiss turns it down. Uncog AI never suggests that change again.
Later puts it away for a week, once, like other suggestions.

Nothing changes until someone chooses Accept or changes the part themselves. If you make the change yourself, the card goes away. A suggestion that stops being true by the next week's check goes away too. The suggestions use counts only: they never name a customer.

A suggestion can also come from a LinkedIn campaign: when a campaign Uncog AI suggested reaches places or business sizes outside your ideal customer, choosing Suggest Adding Them to My Profile on it adds a card for each, saying "You aimed a LinkedIn campaign at it, outside your ideal customer." These stay until someone decides them; the Monday check never takes them away. See Business Pulse.

How Uncog AI uses it

Rating your companies. Uncog AI rates every company Strong fit, Partial fit, Weak fit, Left out or Fit unknown by comparing the company's industry, size and place (its state, or its postcode, or its country) with your ideal customer. It uses only the parts someone has confirmed: an industry list that is still yellow isn't compared at all. "All of Australia" matches a company in any state. Suppliers and partners are always Left out, as is any company matching Who to leave out. You see the rating in the Fit column on Contacts → Companies (where Filters can show only some ratings), on a company's page and, as Company Fit, on a contact's page. See Contacts and Companies.
Keeping ratings up to date. When you confirm or change part of your ideal customer, every company is rated again in the background. Until that finishes, the list shows Updating fit… instead of an old rating.
Filling the gaps. A company with no industry or size can't be rated well. For a company you're dealing with, its page may show Is this a good fit? with Add Details, which opens the form on Industry and Size. Fill In From Website in the company's … menu asks Uncog AI to read them from the company's own website, and once your ideal customer's industries or business size are confirmed, Uncog AI also does this for your customers and the companies you've been in touch with lately: straight after you confirm them, then overnight for any new ones. It only fills empty fields, and what it fills waits for you to confirm. Uncog AI doesn't look a company's industry or size up anywhere other than the company's own website. See Contacts and Companies.
Your Business Pulse. The Customers section counts how many of the week's new contacts work at a company that is a strong fit. See Business Pulse.
Campaign suggestions. LinkedIn and Google Ads suggestions can be aimed at it. See Business Pulse.

Good to know

Your account has one ideal customer. You can't add a second one, rename it or delete it in the app.
It stays inside Uncog AI for your team. Your smart agent, your customers' portal and website visitors never see it.
Uncog AI never changes a confirmed part on its own. It only suggests changes, which you accept, edit or dismiss.
To draft from a different set of documents, add them to your Knowledge and choose Redraft. You can't pick which documents the draft reads.