AI Customer Support Automation
Self-built automation demo — not a client project.
An AI support workflow that answers knowledge-base questions, maintains conversation context and escalates requests that require human intervention.
Overview
A customer-facing chat answers questions from a fixed knowledge base and hands off to a person when it genuinely can't help.
Problem
Most support volume is the same handful of questions, but a bot that guesses at policy when it doesn't know the answer is worse than no bot at all.
Solution
The AI answers only from a defined knowledge base and returns a structured decision — resolved, needs human, or unknown — on every reply.
Architecture
How the system is wired together
Knowledge base
A fixed, auditable source of truth
The AI can only answer from these categories — nothing is invented outside them. No vector database or embeddings; a direct lookup is deterministic and easy to audit at this scale.
AI decision logic
Every reply is a structured decision
The model returns an answer plus a status, a confidence score, and — when relevant — a reason, so the outcome is consistent regardless of how the question was phrased.
Demonstration data
“How long does shipping take?”
Standard shipping takes 3–5 business days.
“I want a refund outside the normal return period.”
This request has been flagged for a support representative.
“Can you guarantee delivery tomorrow?”
The knowledge base doesn't cover a delivery guarantee — flagged rather than guessed.
Human escalation
Knowing when to hand off
When the AI determines a request needs a person — a policy exception, a complaint — the conversation is flagged, stored, and surfaced on an internal dashboard for a representative to pick up. No WhatsApp, SMS, Slack, or ticketing integration in this version; escalation stays inside the system by design.
Technology
Testing
Verified end-to-end
- FAQ, shipping, and return questions resolving correctly from the knowledge base
- A refund-exception request correctly escalating to needs_human
- An out-of-scope question correctly returning unknown instead of a guess
- Empty message submissions rejected with a validation error
Demo
Self-built demonstration, not a live support system
This project is a working prototype for a fictional company, built to demonstrate the pattern end-to-end. All example conversations shown above are demonstration data.