Statista's support team handled 200+ queries daily spanning subscription access, data methodology questions, custom data requests and citation guidance. Each query type required searching a different internal knowledge source — help articles, methodology docs, subscription databases and internal pricing guides.
Tier-1 agents were spending 60–70% of their time on queries that could be answered from documented sources, leaving senior research staff to handle overflows rather than high-value client work.
The additional constraint: Statista operates in three languages (EN, DE, FR) and has strict compliance requirements around what information can be shared with which subscription tier — the agent needed to be aware of customer entitlements before answering.
Ingested 4,000+ help articles, methodology PDFs and internal FAQs. Tagged each chunk with entitlement level (free, basic, enterprise) to enforce access control at retrieval time.
GPT-4o with multilingual instruction tuning, custom retrieval chain that checks customer entitlement before surfacing content, citation tracking so every answer references its source document.
Confidence-threshold-based escalation to human agents with full conversation context. Immutable audit log of every query, retrieved chunk and generated answer for compliance review.
Embedded in Statista's Zendesk workflow. A/B rollout: 30% of inbound queries routed to agent for 2 weeks before full launch. Monitored CSAT, containment and escalation rate daily.