“Our AI might be wrong” is not an AI strategy

AI Agents are great at listening. They catch every word, every nuance… and sometimes still deliver an answer that’s polished, confident, and completely wrong.

It can sound right even when it’s absolutely wrong… and wrong, with the swagger of a TED Talk.

That confidence is the danger. Customers believe it. And in enterprise, belief in a wrong answer can mean legal exposure, compliance headaches, brand damage and the kind of global headlines you really don’t want.

At its best, an AI Agent makes the customer feel heard. Old-school chatbots were like vending machines that forgot your change: functional but cold and inflexible. An AI Agent lets customers tell their story in their own words, picking up nuance, intent and emotion in ways past chatbots never could.

But understanding the question is not the same as knowing the right answer. Hallucinations, outdated content or pulling from the wrong section of a sprawling knowledge base will happen. In industries with overlapping products or customer types, the AI Agent does not always know to ask the crucial clarifying question.

Air Canada’s AI Agent told a passenger the wrong refund policy. He believed it, booked the ticket, and later discovered the actual rules said otherwise. He took them to court. He won. The CEO made global news for an AI Agent that got it wrong.

One mistake. One customer. International embarrassment. (Forbes)

Customers expect companies to know them. Having to educate the company every single time on who they are, what they have bought and where they are going is an annoying waste of their time. The best AI Agents do not need to ask for the basics; they already have them, pulled in from the systems you trust.

That context reduces guesswork and with it, greatly reducing the risk of delivering a perfectly articulated but completely unhelpful answer.

The future of AI Agents in enterprise customer service is not about letting it guess. It is about building a system where:

• Intent is crystal clear
  AI Agents that understand not just what the customer said, but what they meant.
• Context is automatic
  key details flow in from internal systems so the AI Agent starts with the facts.
• Answers are safe
  pulled from an approved, compliant, up-to-date knowledge base.
• Confidence has guardrails
  if the AI Agent cannot be sure, it escalates instead of improvising.
  

We have implemented AI Agents for teams where compliance is always in the room, even when it is not invited.

Because when the stakes are this high, you do not want an answer that just sounds right. You want it to be right. Every time.