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Building Smarter Customer Support Agents

Nitish Agarwal
6 min readDec 21, 2024

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Photo by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash

The hum of anticipation around AI in customer service is undeniable. We envision seamless interactions, instant answers, and personalized support experiences. But the journey from aspiration to reality lies in how effectively we build the AI agents powering these interactions.

Over 2024, there has quite a lot of thought put into experimenting with Large Language Model (LLM) to transform their customer support. And the biggest lesson learned isn’t about wielding the most complex technology; it’s about mastering the art of simplicity and composition. Drawing insights from recent breakthroughs and experiences in the field, including those highlighted in “Building effective agents” by Anthropic, we can unpack how to construct truly impactful customer support agents.

Beyond the Chatbot: Understanding the “Agentic” Advantage

Before diving in, let’s clarify what we mean by “agent.” While a basic chatbot might follow pre-programmed scripts, a true AI agent exhibits a greater degree of intelligence, context comprehension and autonomy. As Anthropic’s research points out, we can distinguish between two key architectural approaches:

  • Workflows: These are like meticulously planned itineraries where the LLM and various tools follow a pre-defined path. Think of it as a…

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