Sources and data access
For a support assistant, a project brief should identify which product records, policies and help pages it can use. For each source, agree who maintains it, when it changes and which parts are public. Decide how to identify individual records so the application can keep a price, year or availability date with the right item.
For customer-specific questions, agree which facts can be taken from the page and which require verified identity. A product page can identify what a visitor is looking at. An order lookup needs a separate identity check and permission to read that order. Define which parts of the lookup result the assistant may return to the customer.
Worked example from Reesponder
The Reesponder engineering case includes a catalogue test with a 2018 Toyota Auris and a 2020 Peugeot 508. A draft answer assigns the wrong year to both cars, despite retrieving the right catalogue. The test checks the year against the identity of each vehicle in the source. It also accounts for a vehicle model appearing in more than one legitimate year.
The same distinction matters when a customer specifies a minimum requirement. A customer asking for a laptop with at least 16 GB of memory should only be offered a laptop that meets that requirement. Reesponder’s review pass checks the proposed recommendation against the customer’s stated constraints. The proposed answer is passed in as material for review, with no connected actions available to the reviewer.
Read how Reesponder verifies answers against source records.
Actions and transfer to staff
For a connected action, agree the request fields the assistant may supply, the permissions the server checks and the result the customer should see. Keep the integration credential on the server. A write workflow can show the customer the operation and relevant details before confirmation. If the connection changes before they confirm, the application should determine whether that approval is still valid.
For handoff, agree what the customer has to provide, where the request goes and how much conversation history the team needs. In Reesponder, the handoff request is saved before an AI summary is generated. If a summary cannot be produced, the application can still deliver the saved transcript. The project brief should identify which details have to survive even when a provider or network connection is unavailable.
Acceptance checks for an assistant
- Ask about two similarly named catalogue items. Check that the answer uses the correct facts for each item and that a mandatory customer requirement survives a follow-up question.
- Ask a question that the approved sources cannot answer. Check that the assistant explains what it can establish and offers the agreed route for further help.
- Try a private lookup before identity has been established and repeat it with a verified account. Check that access is granted only to the permitted record and that the response contains only the agreed fields.
- Change an action’s configuration between proposal and confirmation. Check that the previous approval cannot run the changed action. Interrupt a handoff during summarisation and confirm that staff can still receive the saved request.