Support Agents
Answering customers from your own docs: handoff, metrics, testing, cost, disclosure, and the widget that has no public link.
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AI support agent vs chatbot: what the word “agent” actually changes
A chatbot answers. An AI support agent answers from your docs, shows the source, admits a gap, hands the stuck customer to a person, and learns from the miss. The four differences, one test for each, and what “agent” does not mean.
Read itHow to stop an AI support agent inventing answers about your own product
Five places a support agent invents things — thin retrieval, numbers from memory, stale docs, a false premise, and a helpful tone — and the specific control that closes each one: strict scope, lists it quotes verbatim, corrections, a decline that is matched rather than assumed, and a test set.
Read itWhen should an AI support agent hand off to a human — and what must it carry?
Hand off when the material runs out or the customer asks for a person; never on a guessed schedule. What the handoff must carry (the whole conversation, the email, the moment it happened, what was tried), the dead-end test, and the two handoff mistakes that cost the most.
Read itDeflection rate vs resolution rate: the support metric that flatters, and the one that doesn’t
Deflection counts customers who never reached a person. Resolution counts problems actually solved. The definitions, the formulas, a worked example where 80% deflection hides 50% resolution, and five questions to ask about any vendor’s number.
Read itHow to write help docs an AI support agent can actually answer from
An agent answers from your docs, so the docs are the product. Nine edits that change what it says — one question per page, the answer in the first two sentences, exact numbers, one name per thing, no contradictions, dated limits, a Known issues list, a Common questions list, and corrections for what you can’t rewrite yet.
Read itHow to test an AI support agent before customers see it: a 20-question protocol
Twenty questions in five kinds — covered, reworded, adjacent-but-absent, false premise, and hostile — with a pass mark for each and what a failure tells you to fix. Run it in a sandbox where nothing counts, grade every answer one of four ways, and fix the source rather than the answer.
Read itHow much does an AI support agent cost in 2026? Four pricing models, worked out
Per outcome, per seat, per message credit, or flat: what each model charges for and the volume at which it turns. Intercom’s Fin at $0.99 per outcome and Chatbase’s credit tiers, read from their own pricing pages on 15 September 2026, against hiy’s flat $49 — plus the costs no price list shows.
Read itThe EU AI Act’s chatbot disclosure rule, for support teams: what Article 50 asks of your AI agent
From 2 August 2026, an AI system that talks to people has to make clear it is an AI, from the start of the first interaction, unless that is obvious. What the Commission’s own guidance says, who carries the duty, what a compliant support chat looks like, and why a label no plan can remove is the easy way through.
Read itAn AI support agent for a small SaaS: when it pays, when it doesn’t, and who answers the handoff
With two founders and no support team, the agent is the first line and you are the second. The three conditions under which it pays, the four presets worth knowing, what to do about the handoff when there is no team, why it must not upsell, and the honest case for waiting.
Read itWhy your AI support widget should not have a public URL
A support agent anyone can open is a support agent anyone can drain, scrape or embed on their own site. How a signed, short-lived token minted by your server replaces a public key, what the token must and must not carry, why it is deliberately not a JWT, and why a missing token should look exactly like a 404.
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