Knowledge Capital Group's AI agent for analyst relations professionals and why it works

Jeff Turner, President and Partner at analyst relations experts KCG, direct about where the industry is heading.

One by one, analyst research firms have been launching AI agents. We’re the analyst of analyst research firms, and we’re telling our clients that an AI agent is table stakes now…we had to practice what we preach.

And there was a further advantage Jeff hadn’t anticipated. His clients were already familiar with AI agents – Gartner, Forrester and IDC had all launched their own. “This clientele is used to using tools like that with other firms,” says Jeff. “It’s like, oh, you have one too. There’s no explanation. They can just go in there, use it. They know how to prompt it correctly.”

But KCG didn’t want an out-of-the-box solution. They had two valuable sources of knowledge that had never been connected – and a bigger opportunity in mind.

The first was their research library, 28 years of structured IP held in Content Catalyst. The second was the AR Tribe – a gated online community of more than 800 analyst relations professionals that KCG also runs. There are no analyst firms in the Tribe, and no one trying to sell anything. It is a peer space where members share real experience openly. “When somebody sees something, they go to the Tribe and post about it,” says Jeff. “Such and such just changed their policy, this analyst just left this firm. We get really good real-time information and opinion.”

KCG’s strategic goal for the project was to bridge these two separate sources – the published research library held in Content Catalyst, and the AR Tribe forums held in Circle – and enable clients to use GenAR to draw on both simultaneously to answer a question. The solution was Unify Catalyst, Content Catalyst’s multi-source AI product, built on MyCatalyst using an MCP server to connect the research library in Content Catalyst with the Tribe forums in Circle.

“When someone asks something, they want to know what KCG says about that, and what their peers say about it,” says Jeff. “Our formal research might be what they share with their stakeholder, but the social feedback is an excellent extra data point they’ll also use in their decision making.”

In practice, a client brings a question to GenAR and gets an answer that draws on both KCG’s formal research and the lived experience of the AR Tribe community. GenAR clearly distinguishes which parts of the answer come from which source. A one-click link takes the user directly to the original article or thread.

Early results: visibility, insight and retention

Jeff is already seeing increased visibility as clients start using GenAR.

We know who’s asking and what they’re asking about – it’s giving us a tonne of insight into what’s important to our clients and prospects.”

The team also uses GenAR daily in their own work. Before an inquiry, they type the topic into the tool to check that its answers are factually correct, current and relevant – and so far, it has proved extremely accurate. GenAR, Jeff says, is a useful mirroring tool: the same technique his clients use to test how they are perceived in the market.

Client retention is the number one expected business benefit. At renewal time, Jeff wants the decision maker to feel GenAR has become indispensable – so embedded in their daily workflow that they can’t imagine working without it.

Scaling a lean team with AI-powered triage

KCG is a team of five, offering unlimited enquiry to all clients. Saturation, Jeff says, is inevitable. “What this allows us to do, this tool, is almost like a triage.”

The business has already started using GenAR to triage client inquiries, having found the tool reliably generates the same answer the team would have given. “If we get an email inquiry, one of our team members or myself will go to GenAR and basically put that question in there. We take that, copy it, and say, look, use the GenAR tool – go there first when you have questions like this and see what it gives you. And if you want further contextualisation, then yes, let’s set up an inquiry and talk about it.” Eight or nine times out of ten, clients find the answer they need without needing to come to KCG at all – freeing the team to focus on the exceptions and on more complex conceptual problem solving through live inquiry session and creating more research that feeds back into the engine.

For KCG, the partnership with Content Catalyst delivered on both ambition and timeline. The deadline was tight – KCG wanted to launch GenAR at their annual event. “That’s what we wanted to do,” says Jeff. “Make a big splash.” They did.

Jeff’s ambition for GenAR is straightforward: “That tool is indispensable. That is part of my workflow. That is something that I can’t live without.” That is what he wants every KCG client to say.