AI Customer Support Automation

The problem

Most e-commerce support volume is a handful of questions asked endlessly: where is my order, how do I return this, does it come in another size. Answering them consumes the capacity needed for the smaller number of genuinely difficult cases.

How it works

An agent built on the OpenAI API handles the repetitive tier across chat and email, resolving order tracking, returns and product questions end to end rather than deflecting into a help centre. Redis holds conversation state so a customer who replies an hour later continues the same conversation instead of starting over.

Zendesk integration is what makes escalation work. When the agent hands off, the ticket arrives with the full conversation and what was already tried attached, so the human does not open with the question the customer has already answered twice.

What shaped it

Escalation quality mattered more than deflection rate. An automated agent that resolves most contacts but hands off badly produces worse support than no automation at all, because the customer has to repeat everything having already been made to wait.

Outcome

Average resolution time fell and support capacity stretched further, with human agents concentrated on the cases that needed judgement.