Role covered: Customer service representative
Customer Support Agent
Answers routine questions straight away and hands the difficult ones to a person, with the context attached.
Resolves order-status, returns, shipping and how-to questions from your help centre and order data. Anything sensitive, unusual or emotional is passed to your team with a summary and a suggested reply.
Customer Support Agentonline on WhatsApp
- New chat about order #48213
Customer: Hi, where is my order #48213?
Agent: Hello, I am the shop's AI assistant. Your order is out for delivery today. Here is your tracking link.
Customer: Thanks. Can I also get a refund on an item I bought two months ago?
Agent: A refund outside the return window needs a person to decide. I have passed this to a colleague with your order details, and they will reply here.
- Handed to your team with a summary and a suggested reply
- Starts when
- A new ticket, chat or email
- Asks you before
- Refunds, exceptions and anything outside policy
- Works in
- Zendesk or Gorgias
- Shopify
- Help centre
How it works
One run of the Customer Support Agent, step by step
Green steps are done by the agent. The yellow step is where you check the work. Press play, or pick a step.
Customer Support Agent: one run
Step 1 of 5: Starts
A customer writes in
Email, chat widget, WhatsApp or contact form: every channel feeds the same queue.
- Handled by
- Your tools
- Touches
- Chat
Division of work
What the agent takes, and what stays with you
The routine work goes to the agent. The judgment stays with your team.
The agent handles
- Order status, tracking and delivery questions
- Returns and exchanges that fall within your policy
- Product and how-to questions from your help centre
- Tagging, routing and summarising every ticket
- Suggested replies for the human team
You keep
- Complaints, exceptions and goodwill gestures
- Policy decisions
- Relationships with key customers
Guardrails
You stay in control of every agent
An agent is a new team member with a narrow job, limited access and a manager. These four rules apply to every one I build.
Approval first
Customer-facing or costly actions wait for a person until you decide a step can run on its own.
Only what it needs
The agent gets its own login with only the access the job needs. No shared passwords.
Full log
Every read, decision and action is recorded, so you can see what it did and why.
Off switch
Pause the agent at any time. Your tools keep working exactly as they did before.
Getting started
From first call to an agent you trust
Every agent starts supervised. It earns more freedom only after it has done the job well on real work.
- 01
Map the job
We write down the task as it is done today: the inputs, the rules, the exceptions and what good looks like.
- 02
Build on your data
I build the agent and test it on real past cases until its work matches your standard.
- 03
Supervised launch
It runs live with every action approved by you, and the rules are tuned on real work.
- 04
Run and improve
Approvals are relaxed where the agent has earned it. I monitor it, report on it and keep improving it.
Questions
About the Customer Support Agent
More agents
Agents that work well alongside it
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Reads documents and enters the data into your systems, then checks its own work.
- Starts when
- A document arrives by email, upload or scan
- Asks you
- Low-confidence fields and failed checks
- Works in
- Google Sheets
- Airtable
- Customer list or accounts
Covers: Bookkeeping clerk
Bookkeeping Agent
Keeps the books current between accountant visits.
- Starts when
- The daily bank feed and incoming receipts
- Asks you
- New suppliers, unusual amounts and the month-end pack
- Works in
- Xero or QuickBooks
- Bank transactions
Covers: Sales development representative
Sales Development Agent
Researches every lead, writes the first message and books the meeting.
- Starts when
- A new lead, form submission or list upload
- Asks you
- First messages, until you trust the tone
- Works in
- HubSpot or Pipedrive
- Calendar
Put the Customer Support Agent to work
Tell me how the job is done today. I will tell you what the agent can take over, what it needs access to, and what should stay with a person.