Empathy Engine - A human-in-loop support agent that tracks customer signals
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Empathy Engine is a human-in-the-loop support copilot that tracks
communication signals, explains shifts in tone, flags escalation risk, and
creates guarded replies with Fireworks AI. Agents can accept, edit, reject, or escalate every suggestion. Built with Supabase, tenant isolation, PII redaction, and Zendesk-ready APIs, it makes customer support more aware—not less human!
Replies
The part I would push on is escalation risk from tone. We build on the support side, so this is the thing I get wrong the most.
In e-commerce the anger is usually not about the conversation, it is about the order. Someone is furious because the package is late, and they can stay perfectly polite while about to charge back. The other way too: a lot of people are just blunt by default, short sentences, no please, and a tone model reads that as risk when nothing is wrong.
So tone on its own over-triggers on the blunt customers and under-triggers on the calm one whose problem is actually severe. The thing that predicts escalation for us is order state, not sentiment. Late, refunded and still open, second time asking.
Does the escalation flag see any of that, or only the words in the thread? If it is reading tone without the order behind it, I think it catches the loud tickets and misses the dangerous quiet ones.
@jernej_jan_kocica That is the best observation I've got so far!
You are absolutely right that tone alone can over-flag naturally blunt customers while missing calm customers facing serious problems hence to address this Empathy Engine includes a case-context field so the model can consider information such as the order status, previous contacts, refunds, delays, and the underlying issue alongside the conversation tone for this exact issue.
However, your point suggests we should go further by integrating these operational signals directly and weighting them more heavily when calculating escalation risk!
That's a great idea as it would help distinguish a loud but low-risk ticket from a polite customer who is close to charging back. Thanks for highlighting this as it gives us a very clear direction for improving the product!
How much do you think from your personal experience on how much the tone affects the escalation risk vs experience quality?