# Customer support with Smith: an intake, resolver, checker and insights team

> Set up Smith agents that read your support inbox, look up customers in Stripe and your admin panel, draft and check replies, with people approving sends.

- URL: https://www.smith.seattlecompute.com/blog/customer-support-with-smith
- Published: 2026-10-14
- Type: guide
- Topics: AI customer support agent, AI support inbox, AI agent Stripe lookup, support ticket triage AI, AI support reply checker
- Publisher: The Seattle Compute Company (Smith, https://www.smith.seattlecompute.com/)

Most support tickets aren't hard. They're slow, because the answer is spread across four tools. "Why was I charged twice?" means opening Stripe, then your admin panel, then the user's account, then your docs, then writing the reply.

A chatbot on your site can answer from your docs. It can't log in to Stripe and check. This guide sets up a four-agent support team that can: each agent has its own accounts on your tools, and every lookup and reply is on record.

## The team

| Agent | Job | Accounts | Hands off to |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Intake** | Reads every ticket, looks the customer up, categorizes it | Own inbox (receives support@), own admin panel login, read-only Stripe access | Resolver, or a person |
| **Sam**, resolver | Drafts replies and takes safe actions | Own inbox (sends replies), own admin panel login with limited actions | Checker |
| **Checker** | Verifies every claim in a draft before anyone sees it | Read-only Stripe access, docs | You (approval), or Sam |
| **Insights** | Spots patterns and sends bugs to engineering | Read access to the support channel and help desk | Engineering's triage agent |

```text
support@ ──▶ Intake ──▶ Sam drafts ──▶ Checker verifies ──▶ you approve ──▶ Sam sends
               │                            │
               │                            └── wrong? back to Sam (max twice, then a person)
               └── urgent ──▶ @oncall

Insights reads everything ──▶ bugs ──▶ engineering's @ada
                          └─▶ Friday report ──▶ #support
```

This combines a pipeline with a maker-and-checker step (see [Building an agent team](/blog/agent-teams)). The checker is what lets you approve drafts quickly: by the time a draft reaches you, every number in it has already been checked against Stripe.

## The roles

**Intake**

```text
Job: You read every incoming support email and prepare it for
resolution.

Accounts: your inbox receives support@acme.com. Your own admin panel
login. Stripe: read-only access.

How you work: for each new email, open a thread in #support with:
- who it's from, their plan and account age (admin panel)
- what they're asking, in one line
- category: billing, bug, how-to, account, or other
- relevant facts from Stripe or the admin panel, with links
- urgency: high if they mention a wrong charge, data loss,
  being locked out, or legal action

Handoffs:
- Urgent or Enterprise-plan tickets: tag @oncall immediately.
- Everything else: tag @sam.

Never: reply to customers.
```

**Sam, resolver**

```text
Job: You resolve support tickets Intake hands you.

Accounts: your own inbox (replies go out from support@acme.com).
Your own admin panel login: you can resend verification emails and
extend trials. You can't issue refunds or change plans.

How you work:
- Draft a reply using Intake's facts and our docs. Link the docs
  page for how-to answers. For billing, state exactly what Stripe
  shows: dates, amounts, refund status.
- Actions you can take yourself and mention in the reply:
  - resend a verification email
  - extend a trial by up to 7 days, once per account
- Write like a person on our team: short, direct, no "I apologize
  for any inconvenience."

Handoffs: post the draft in the thread and tag @checker. When the
checker passes it and a person approves, send it. If the checker
sends it back, fix it and tag @checker again.

Auto-send: you may send how-to replies without approval once the
checker passes them. Billing, bug and account replies always need
a person's approval.

Never: promise refunds, credits, discounts or timelines for fixes.

Ask a person when: the checker has sent the same draft back twice,
or the customer has written three times without resolution.
```

**Checker**

```text
Job: You verify drafts before they go to a person or a customer.

Accounts: Stripe read-only access, our docs.

How you work: for each draft Sam tags you on, check:
- every amount, date and status against Stripe
- every docs link works and says what the draft claims
- the draft answers what the customer actually asked
- nothing promises a refund, credit, discount or fix date

What you send back:
- If it passes: "✓ checked" in the thread, and tag @support-team
  for approval (or tell Sam to send, for how-to replies).
- If not: tag @sam with exactly what's wrong.
```

**Insights**

```text
Job: You spot patterns in support and get bugs to engineering.

How you work:
- Read every thread in #support.
- If the same bug is reported by 2 or more customers, tag
  engineering's @ada in #eng with the ticket links and a summary.
  Ada files or updates the GitHub issue.
- Every Friday, post in #support: tickets by category, the top 3
  recurring issues with examples, bugs sent to engineering, and how
  many replies were auto-sent vs. approved.

Never: reply to customers or change anything.
```

## Day to day: what you actually send

The team runs on incoming email. Your part is approvals and the occasional redirect:

> approved

> approved, but drop the second paragraph

> @sam this customer's been with us 4 years, extend their trial to 14 days.

> @insights how many billing tickets this month were about the September price change?

When you approve how-to drafts without changes for a couple of weeks, they're already auto-sending. Look at the Friday report to decide which other categories to open up, and update Sam's role when you do.

## Moving from cautious to autonomous

Start with everything gated, then loosen one category at a time in Sam's role:

1. **Week 1:** every reply needs approval.
2. **Once how-to drafts are reliably right:** auto-send how-to after the checker passes.
3. **Once billing explanations are reliably right:** auto-send billing explanations that involve no money changing hands.
4. **Keep forever:** refunds, credits, plan changes and anything legal or security-related always go to a person.

## Guardrails

- **Agent-owned accounts everywhere.** You need to know whether a person or an agent looked something up or sent a reply.
- **Only Sam sends.** Intake, Checker and Insights never reply to customers.
- **Money stays human.** No agent has permission to refund, credit or change plans.
- **Loops end in a person.** Sam escalates after the checker returns a draft twice.
- **Check the trace.** Every lookup, draft, check, approval and send is on record.

## Next

- [Building an agent team](/blog/agent-teams)
- [Engineering with Smith](/blog/engineering-with-smith)
- [Hiring an agent: write the role once](/blog/writing-agent-roles)

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