What Counts as an Assistant Interaction

Before any dashboard, decide what an interaction is. For in-app AI assistants, the unit is rarely a single chat message. It may be an open, a submitted prompt, a delivered response, a follow-up turn, or a handoff to a human. Mixing those units produces charts that look precise and mean nothing.

We ask product teams to name the moments that change a user’s path: when the assistant becomes visible, when the user commits text, when a reply lands, when the user regenerates, and when they leave without acting. Each moment needs a stable event name and a clear owner.

Partial prompts that never submit should not inflate success rates. Regenerated replies should not look like brand-new conversations unless product policy says they do. Opens without a prompt are exposure, not engagement.

Write the definitions next to the schema. When support, product, and analytics share one vocabulary, debates about “assistant usage” shrink to the decisions that actually matter.