Asking Terry

Terry is Tiermark's AI assistant. It answers questions about Tiermark and about your own organization's account, from the help center, and hands anything it cannot settle to a person. It is a computer program, not a member of the team, and it says so at the top of every conversation: "Terry, Tiermark's AI assistant. Terry can see your account (read-only) and will hand anything it can't settle to a person."

Where to find it

Once you are signed in, Ask Terry sits at the bottom right of every page (on a phone, a chat icon in the bar at the top, beside the menu), this help center included, and the conversation stays with you as you move between pages. Every help article, and the help center's front page, also ends with a Still have a question? box, which offers Chat with Terry beside the help address while you are signed in. Terry can help once your organization is set up.

Choose either button to open the conversation, and the close button (×) or the Escape key to put it away. An empty conversation offers three starting questions under Try one of these; pressing one sends it. Type your own question and press Enter or Send to send it; Shift+Enter starts a new line. A message may be up to 2,000 characters. A reply usually takes several seconds. Anyone on your team can ask, whatever their role, before your organization is verified as well as after.

If Ask Terry is not in your console yet, it is not available to you yet. Write to help@tiermark.io instead, which reaches the same people.

What Terry answers from

• The help center. Terry answers from these articles and from your own account, described next, and nothing else. A reply links the article it rests on (usually one, at most two), and shows that article's screenshot under the reply when one shows you what to find or press. If the help center does not answer your question, Terry says so and hands it to a person instead of guessing.
• Your own organization's account, read-only. Terry sees what you see on your own pages: your organization's name, kind and verification status; your role in it; your plan, its state, when its current period ends, whether it is set to cancel then, and the date a failed payment's grace period ends; for a prime, how many suppliers are on your map and your plan's limit; for a supplier, your SPRS estimate (the score, your standing and the counts of your answers), the counts in your self-assessment workspace (how many requirements, objectives, statements, owners, plans of action, open and overdue plans, and evidence entries), your compliance dates and the deadlines they set, and the date you last re-checked your grade. It does not see your members' addresses, your questionnaire answers or what you wrote in the workspace, and it never sees any other organization.

Terry brings in a fact from your account only when it changes the answer: your plan's limit when you ask about adding suppliers, your own date when you ask about a deadline.

What Terry will not do

• Change anything. Terry cannot change or cancel a plan, refund a payment, verify an organization, add or remove a member, correct a record or delete anything. Where the help center says how to do it yourself, Terry explains that; otherwise it hands the request to a person.
• Look up another company. Terry talks only about your own organization. It cannot look anyone up, and it will not send you to another company's page.
• Judge compliance. Terry explains CMMC, SPRS, DFARS and the rest only as the help center does. It never says that a company is compliant, secure or certified, and it gives no legal, compliance or security advice beyond what the help center says.

Reaching a person

Choose Talk to a person at any time. The conversation so far (the last ten turns) goes to a person on the Tiermark team, who follows up with you by email at the address on your membership.

Terry also hands over by itself when:

• it is not sure of its answer, or the help center does not cover your question;
• what you need is something only the team can do: a refund, a billing dispute or double charge, a correction or deletion, a verification problem, or a fault in the product;
• the matter is security, legal or a complaint;
• you are frustrated, or have asked about the same problem before without it being settled;
• your message carries a CUI marking;
• Terry's own reply fails Tiermark's checks and is not sent;
• a message reads as an attempt to take Terry over;
• something fails on Tiermark's side, including a reply that does not come in time.

When it has, the panel says so: in place of Talk to a person it says a person on the team has the conversation and will follow up by email. To add anything for them, write to help@tiermark.io. If the hand-off itself cannot be made, Terry asks you to write to help@tiermark.io, which reaches the same people at any time.

The daily allowance

Each person may send Terry 40 messages a day. The day runs on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), so it begins again at midnight UTC. Choosing Talk to a person counts as one message. When you reach the allowance, Terry tells you so and your message stays in the box. Talk to a person still works up to five more times that day, so you can always hand the conversation over, and you can still write to help@tiermark.io.

Never send CUI, card numbers or secrets

Tiermark cannot hold Controlled Unclassified Information, and Terry is no exception. A message that carries a CUI marking is not read: Terry asks you to send the question again without the marked material, describing it instead of including it, and hands the conversation to a person, whose record says only that a marked message was sent, never what it said. Tiermark keeps no copy of the marked message; it remains only in your own browser tab with the rest of the conversation, and when the tab sends it back with your next message it is replaced by a note saying it was not kept.

The same goes for payment card numbers: a message that looks like it carries one is not read or kept, and Terry asks you to send your question again without it. No person is told. An earlier message that carried one is replaced by a note in the same way. To update your card, open Manage billing in your console's Plan panel; see Payments, invoices and failed cards.

Never send passwords, one-time codes or other secrets either. Nothing Terry does needs them.

What is kept, and who sees it

• The conversation lives in your browser tab. The panel keeps the last 40 entries. It stays while you move between console pages and is cleared when you close the tab (a browser that reopens a closed tab may bring it back with it). Each message you send carries the last ten turns, so that is what Terry knows of the conversation. Tiermark keeps no transcript of it. Only you see it: someone else signing in on the same tab does not.
• A hand-off is kept. When you choose Talk to a person, or Terry hands over by itself, Tiermark keeps the conversation so far with your organization's records: your question, what Terry said, the earlier turns (the last ten), why it was handed over and Terry's note for the person who takes it, with the email address on your membership for the follow-up. Your organization's audit trail records that a hand-off was opened and why, never its text. The person who follows up reads it, and that read is recorded on your audit trail like every support read of your records.
• A count. Tiermark keeps how many messages you sent Terry each day, for the allowance, and nothing of what they said.

Terry answers with an AI model, Anthropic's Claude, which Anthropic runs for Tiermark in the United States. The privacy notice says what Terry reads and what is kept. Nothing you give Tiermark is used to train anyone's artificial intelligence model.