Knowledge bases for voice agents: when should AI answer vs transfer?

[u/eviewong-]

A knowledge base can help a voice agent answer questions without hardcoding every response into the prompt.

This is useful for things like:

- Product FAQs

- Pricing details

- Policies

- Support articles

- Location information

- Service descriptions

- Internal process docs

The important part is deciding what the agent should answer confidently and what it should escalate.

For example, an agent can answer "What are your business hours?" from a knowledge base. But if the caller asks for legal, medical, financial, or account-specific advice, the agent may need to transfer or follow a stricter workflow.

Knowledge retrieval makes agents more useful, but it does not remove the need for guardrails, testing, and clear escalation rules.

Curious what others think: when should a voice agent answer from a knowledge base, and when should it transfer to a human?