The task
Most tickets are already answered somewhere in your help centre, and the cost is the search rather than the writing. Configure an agent to draft a reply from approved content only, with the source beside each claim, and to say plainly when the answer is not in the material. A support agent edits and sends; nothing reaches the customer unread.
What you provide
The ticket
The customer’s message and the thread so far, including what they have already tried.
Approved help content
Published help articles, release notes and support macros your team has agreed can be quoted to customers.
Your tone and escalation rules
How replies are written, and the ticket types that must always go to a person without a draft.
Give the agent a clear brief
Use these instructions as a starting point, alongside your approved sources and permissions.
Draft a reply using only the supplied approved content. Cite the article behind each factual claim. When the content does not answer the question, say so in the draft and stop rather than reasoning to a plausible answer. Do not promise a fix, a date, a refund or a credit. Do not send the reply, close the ticket or change its status.
How the work comes together
Read what was already tried
Take the whole thread, not just the latest message. A reply that suggests the step the customer described doing is worse than no reply at all.
Draft only from approved content
Build the answer from the supplied articles and cite each one. Anything the content does not support is left out, and its absence is stated.
Hand it to an agent
Return the draft with its sources and any gap. A support agent edits, decides whether to send and owns the reply.
Illustrative example · fictional data
A draft that stops where the evidence does
An illustrative draft for a fictional ticket about a failing export, built from an approved help collection.
| Part of the reply | Draft content | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Likely cause | Exports over the size limit are rejected | Help article 214 |
| What to try | Filter the date range and export again | Help article 214, step 3 |
| When it will be raised | Left out: no approved content states a timeline | No source available |
The third row is the discipline that makes the rest usable. Timelines and commitments are exactly what an agent will invent if the configuration lets it.
The human review
A support agent reviews, edits and sends every reply. The playbook drafts and cites; it never contacts a customer or changes a ticket.
Set it up for your team
Define the approved collection
Point the playbook at content your team is willing to see quoted verbatim to a customer. Internal notes and draft articles do not belong in it.
List what is never drafted
Billing disputes, security reports, legal threats and anything involving an account compromise should reach a person with no draft attached.
Keep the sources visible to the agent
The citation is what makes the draft checkable in seconds. A draft without sources takes as long to verify as it does to write.
Check the result before scaling
Run it over resolved tickets and compare with what was actually sent. Measure drafts containing an unsupported claim, which is the failure that reaches a customer, separately from drafts that were merely unhelpful.
Keep the data in the right place
Ticket content carries customer data and sometimes credentials pasted in error. A local deployment keeps the thread and the draft inside your network; a hosted model needs its own explicit decision about what may be sent.
Explore deployment optionsQuestions & answers
Does it reply to the customer directly?
No. It produces a draft with sources. A support agent edits and sends, and the ticket status is never changed by the playbook.
What if the help content does not cover the question?
The draft says so. Configuring an agent to reason its way to an answer from adjacent content is how a confident wrong reply reaches a customer.
Can it promise a fix date?
No. Commitments about fixes, timelines, refunds and credits are excluded by the instructions and belong to a person who can make them.