Can I build a support agent that searches docs and escalates to a human?

Yes — that’s a very common and practical setup.

A support agent can:

1. Search your docs / knowledge base to answer common questions.
2. Decide when it’s unsure or the issue is too complex.
3. Escalate to a human agent with the conversation history and context.

A typical design looks like this:

• User asks a question
• Agent retrieves relevant docs using search or embeddings
• Agent answers with citations or links
• If confidence is low, user asks for a human, or the issue involves billing/security/outages:
  • Create a ticket / handoff to support
  • Include:
    • user’s question
    • what the agent tried
    • relevant docs found
    • conversation summary

Good escalation triggers:

• Low confidence / no relevant docs found
• User says “talk to a person”
• Sensitive topics: billing disputes, account access, legal, security
• Repeated failure to resolve
• High-value customer or urgent issue

Best practices:

• Be transparent that it’s an AI assistant
• Let users easily request a human
• Log retrieval results and escalation reasons
• Keep humans in the loop for edge cases
• Continuously improve docs based on escalations

If you want, I can also help you design:

• a simple architecture,
• the escalation logic,
• or a prompt/tooling setup for the agent.