An AI agent can read an email, look up a customer, check stock and prepare an order faster than any person. That does not mean it should decide everything. The useful question is not "can the agent do it?" but "who is accountable if it goes wrong?"
What an agent can do on its own
Work that follows clear rules, uses digital data and is easy to check:
- reading incoming orders, requests and documents and pulling out the details;
- looking up customers, prices, stock and delivery dates;
- creating and updating records in the CRM and ERP;
- sending confirmations, reminders and status updates;
- chasing missing answers and moving the process on.
What should wait for a person
| Decision | What the agent does | What the person does |
|---|---|---|
| Payments | Prepares the payment and the paperwork | Releases the money |
| Contracts | Drafts and compares versions | Reads and signs |
| Orders over a limit | Prepares the order with the customer's history | Approves or changes it |
| Refunds and complaints | Gathers the order, photos and history | Decides |
| Anything with legal weight | Collects the context | Acts |
| Unusual cases | Stops and asks | Decides, and the rule may be updated |
Four rules to agree before anything runs
- Access. The agent sees only the systems and fields the workflow needs, with access you grant and can revoke.
- Limits. Write down the thresholds: an order value, a discount, a type of customer. Above them, a named person approves.
- Exceptions. When a case does not fit the rules, or two rules conflict, the agent hands it to a person instead of guessing.
- Records. Every automated step is logged, so your team can see what happened and why.
Make approvals fast, or people will skip them
A person in the loop only works if approving is quick. The agent should bring everything needed to decide in one place: the request, the history, the options and what each one costs. Approving should take seconds, not a search through three systems.
Move the line as trust grows
Start strict. Look at the cases that were passed to people: if most were approved without changes, the limit can move. If many needed corrections, the rules need work before the agent does more.
The goal is not to remove people. It is to let one person handle more cases, and spend their time on the ones that need them.
This is how Razum AI is set up: rules agreed before the pilot, named approvers, and every step logged. See what waits for a person in Razum.
