AI Assist becomes unusable after human response - Smart Answer fails to work on follow-up messages
I’ve run into a major limitation with AI Assist that makes it almost unusable for real-world support workflows involving any kind of back-and-forth with customers.
The issue:
Once a human agent has replied in a ticket - even using Smart Answer - the AI seems unable to handle follow-up messages in that same thread.
It will respond:
“Insufficient information to generate a reply.”
Even if:
- The customer reply is clear and directly related to the initial query
- The same query works fine in the chatbot
- The AI has already handled the first message in the thread without issue
This breaks one of the most critical workflows - when a customer writes back to an initial response, and the agent wants to continue using Smart Answer to speed things up or maintain consistency.
Example workflow:
- Customer writes in with a question
- AI Assist assigns itself to the ticket but takes no action
- Agent opens ticket → clicks Smart Answer → AI generates valid response → agent sends it
- Customer replies to the message with more info / follow-up question
- Agent opens updated ticket → clicks Smart Answer
- AI returns “insufficient information to generate a reply”
At this point, Smart Answer is useless - even though the follow-up is part of the same conversation and should be within the AI’s capabilities.
Why this matters:
Support tickets are rarely one-and-done. Many involve two or more messages, especially when you’re asking customers for more information. If the AI can’t handle follow-up questions or use the thread’s context after a human reply, it seriously limits its usefulness in any realistic support setting.
Even worse, this limitation - isn’t obvious at first - everything seems to work until a second message comes in. But once it does, AI Assist becomes a dead end.
Feature request / fix:
AI Assist (or at least Smart Answer) should be able to:
- Generate valid responses even after a human reply
- Retain message context from earlier in the conversation
- Continue assisting in tickets that are still open and active
Ideally, there would also be an option to re-activate or re-assign the AI to a thread, manually or conditionally (e.g. after a delay or when a new message comes in).
Would love to know if others are seeing the same, or if this is being looked at. As it stands, it really undercuts the potential of AI Assist as a true partner in support.