Support Virtual Agent
AI-powered customer support that helps Xbox players troubleshoot issues and reach resolution faster.
Role
Creative Director
Scope
UX Strategy • Conversational Design • AI-Guided Support • Escalation Patterns
Surfaces
Web
Team
Efus Richman • Ryan Medlin • Makenna Morton • Kara Philipovich • Christina Sa
Status
Live
Rethinking support around customer intent
Support Virtual Agent combined conversational AI, voice interactions, and an embodied AI agent to help Xbox customers troubleshoot issues and reach resolution more naturally.
Instead of navigating support categories, customers can describe their problem in their own words and receive personalized guidance toward resolution.
As Xbox expanded across devices, subscriptions, services, and purchases, support grew increasingly complex.
Customers often knew something was wrong but not where to start — traditional flows relied on navigation and troubleshooting trees that required understanding the support system before getting help.
We saw an opportunity to shift support from category-based navigation to intent-based assistance.
Creative Director / UX Lead
Led UX strategy and experience design in partnership with product, engineering, content strategy, and support teams.
Defining the conversational experience and interaction model
Designing AI-guided support and troubleshooting journeys
Establishing trust, transparency, and escalation patterns
Connecting conversational AI with existing support experiences and services
Driving end-to-end customer experience direction
Click on images to enlarge
- Focus on customer intent rather than support categories
- Blend conversational AI with guided support experiences
- Create clear paths between self-service, automation, and human support
- Design for trust, clarity, and recovery when AI could not resolve an issue
- Iterate using customer feedback, testing, and support insights
We created a unified support experience that blends conversational AI, voice, and an embodied AI companion with troubleshooting, help content, and clear escalation paths, all in one journey that adapts to the customer instead of forcing them to adapt to the support system.
Giving support a voice and a personality
We explored personality, motion, and voice alongside a supporting brand system, keeping automated help warm, trustworthy, and unmistakably Xbox.
Click on images to enlarge
Early character explorations
Early explorations of the character, eventually the final product being rendered in real time with Babylon.js, the engine powering the Support Virtual Agent 3D avatars: voice-driven animation, lip sync, and facial expression so the character could react, emote, and interact naturally.
Beta build with Babylon.js
Xbox's First AI-Powered Support
Helped push this 0→1 experience — the first AI-powered support system of its kind at Xbox.
Advanced Support's AI Evolution
Helped shape Xbox's evolution toward AI-powered support experiences.
From Navigation to Intent
Shifted support journeys from navigation-based flows toward intent-driven experiences.
Conversation exposed the gaps that traditional support flows often hid.
When customers could describe issues in their own words, it became clear that many problems didn't fit neatly into predefined categories.
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