Example project · Assistants for your team and your customers - A support assistant for returns and stock questions
Customer service answers the same return, lead-time, and documentation questions all day. We build an assistant that answers from approved information, collects what the desk needs, and hands anything else to a person.
Crestline Safety Supply. Safety and PPE, 2,000 customers, a three-person customer service desk.
The situation
About half of inbound emails are return-policy questions, requests for safety data sheets, and stock or lead-time checks.
The answers exist in a policy document, a product-data folder, and the ERP, but a person has to look each one up.
What we build
- A knowledge source built only from approved content: the return policy, product documents, and a stock-status export refreshed on an agreed schedule.
- A website or email assistant that answers those questions, cites the document it used, and collects order number and reason when a return is requested.
- Escalation rules: anything about product suitability, pricing, or an angry customer goes straight to the desk with the conversation attached.
- For authenticated customers, order status can be added later as a separately scoped integration.
The workflow in action
A public support question
Customer: “What do you need for a return request?” Assistant: “Please provide the invoice number, item number, quantity, and item condition. A support team member reviews eligibility before approving the return.” Source: returns policy, revision 3.
An internal support question
“Find the approved installation document for this catalog item.”
- The assistant retrieves the applicable document and shows its source and version.
- It prepares a response for the representative.
- Missing or conflicting documents are escalated.
Where the assistant stops
- Order or account details
- The customer signs in to see their own order and account information.
- Technical suitability
- Escalate uncertain substitutions, compatibility, and safety-critical advice to the qualified product or technical team.
- Unknown answer
- Collect the relevant details and hand the conversation to the service desk, with the open question highlighted.
Example project timeline - What lands on your desk, and when.
Weeks 1 to 2
The approved content list, the escalation rules, and 100 real past questions used as the test set.
Week 3
The assistant answering the test set, with your service lead grading each answer as correct, incomplete, or should-have-escalated.
Week 4
A soft launch to a small group of customers, with every conversation reviewable by the desk.
Weeks 5 to 6
General availability, a weekly quality review, and handover to the service lead as owner.
What you get
- The assistant, its content sources, and its escalation rules, documented.
- A review screen showing every conversation, what was answered, and what was escalated.
- A process for updating approved content without involving us.
What you don’t get
- Answering from the open internet or from unapproved documents.
- Recommending whether a product is suitable for a customer’s use. That is escalated.
- Customer-specific order data without authentication, which is scoped separately.
How we measure performance
- Share of inbound questions resolved without a person.
- Escalations that should have been answered, and answers that should have been escalated, from the weekly review.
- Customer-service response time for the questions that still reach the desk.
Let’s start with one thing.
Give your team more time for the work that needs them.
Show us the quoting, order-entry, or follow-up work that keeps piling up. We’ll map it with you and find a practical place to start.
Start with a free workflow conversation with Alex.