Start with an autonomous triage loop. Duckie should receive a ticket, attach customer context, classify intent and urgency, apply allowed tags or attributes, route high-confidence tickets, and send only required exceptions to an internal handoff channel.
This proves the system without starting with every escalation, reporting, and improvement loop at once.
The MVP is one intake record, one context bundle, one classifier output, one deterministic routing workflow, and one exception path for cases that should not be handled automatically.
MVP Goal
By the end of the MVP, Duckie should reliably answer:
- What did the customer ask for?
- Which customer, account, product, and prior-ticket context matters?
- What intent, product area, urgency, sentiment, and route should be applied?
- Is the classification confident enough for autonomous routing?
- Which tags, attributes, queue, priority, or owner should be written?
- Which cases require a human handoff because policy, risk, or confidence requires it?
Minimal Flow
Build First
| Piece | What to build | Done when |
|---|
| Intake deployment | Trigger from helpdesk, inbox, chat, email, or webhook. | Duckie receives new tickets and stores the source ticket link. |
| Context enrichment | Fetch CRM, subscription, product, order, incident, and prior-ticket context. | Classifications use internal context instead of asking the customer for known information. |
| Triage classifier | Return intent, product area, urgency, sentiment, missing information, recommended route, and confidence. | The classifier produces structured output that the routing workflow can validate. |
| Routing workflow | Apply deterministic tag, priority, SLA, queue, and owner rules. | High-confidence tickets follow predictable support rules. |
| Helpdesk writeback | Write allowed tags, attributes, internal notes, queue, priority, or assignee. | Writebacks use only allowed values and link to the Duckie run. |
| Exception handoff | Route only required exceptions to an internal channel or specialist queue. | Low-confidence, sensitive, or high-risk tickets leave the autonomous path cleanly. |
Defer Until the MVP Works
Add these after the first autonomous loop is trusted:
- Broad or highly granular taxonomies
- Multi-step specialist handoff automation
- Automatic sensitive category routing
- Assignment and SLA changes for low-confidence tickets
- Daily reporting and feedback agents
- Automated customer responses beyond simple missing-information requests
- Expansion to every support queue at once
Required Human Handoffs
Keep humans in the loop only when the workflow cannot safely continue autonomously:
| Condition | Handoff |
|---|
| Low classification confidence | Send the ticket, context, recommendation, and reason to an internal triage channel. |
| Sensitive or policy-bound category | Route to the team that owns the policy decision. |
| Expensive downstream action | Ask for confirmation before triggering the downstream workflow. |
| Missing account match or conflicting context | Route to support operations or the owning queue. |
| Tool failure blocks routing | Create an internal note and route to the fallback queue. |
The first live win is not a perfect taxonomy. It is consistent autonomous routing for known paths, with narrow exception handling for cases that actually need a person.
When to Expand
Move beyond the MVP when:
- High-confidence routes are consistently correct
- Helpdesk writebacks use the expected tags, queues, priorities, and owners
- Exception handoffs are rare, specific, and answerable
- Support teams can explain the remaining reroutes and corrections
- The taxonomy has enough run data to justify splitting broad categories
- The main remaining delays are downstream handoffs that automation can remove
Next Pages
After the MVP:
- Read the system map to see the full architecture.
- Build intake and customer context.
- Add intent, tagging, and routing.
- Use the rollout plan before expanding live routing.
