# RAG based Question-Answering for Contextual Response Prediction System

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.03708 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.03708/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Sep 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [SQuAD: 100,000+ Questions for Machine Comprehension of Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05250/) (2016)
- [Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03172/) (2023)
- [Longformer: The Long-Document Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05150/) (2020)
- [TriviaQA: A Large Scale Distantly Supervised Challenge Dataset for Reading Comprehension](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.03551/) (2017)
- [Learning to summarize from human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.01325/) (2020)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10997/) (2023)
- [MS MARCO: A Human Generated MAchine Reading COmprehension Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.09268/) (2016)
- [Leveraging Passage Retrieval with Generative Models for Open Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01282/) (2020)
- [Chatbot Arena: An Open Platform for Evaluating LLMs by Human Preference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04132/) (2024)
- [Efficient and robust approximate nearest neighbor search using Hierarchical Navigable Small World graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09320/) (2016)
- [Generalization through Memorization: Nearest Neighbor Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.00172/) (2019)
- [REPLUG: Retrieval-Augmented Black-Box Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12652/) (2023)
- [Learning To Retrieve Prompts for In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08633/) (2021)
- [Universal Sentence Encoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.11175/) (2018)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for AI-Generated Content: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19473/) (2024)
- [Human Preference Score: Better Aligning Text-to-Image Models with Human Preference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14420/) (2023)
- [AlignScore: Evaluating Factual Consistency with a Unified Alignment Function](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16739/) (2023)
- [Promptagator: Few-shot Dense Retrieval From 8 Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11755/) (2022)
- [Head-to-Tail: How Knowledgeable are Large Language Models (LLMs)? A.K.A. Will LLMs Replace Knowledge Graphs?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10168/) (2023)
- [PALR: Personalization Aware LLMs for Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.07622/) (2023)
- [Augmentation-Adapted Retriever Improves Generalization of Language Models as Generic Plug-In](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17331/) (2023)
- [Knowledge-Augmented Large Language Models for Personalized Contextual Query Suggestion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06318/) (2023)
- [PEFA: Parameter-Free Adapters for Large-scale Embedding-based Retrieval Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02429/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [A Systematic Review of Key Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Systems: Progress, Gaps, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.18910/) (2025)
- [Beyond-RAG: Question Identification and Answer Generation in Real-Time Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10136/) (2024)
- [A Unified Framework for Context-Aware IoT Management and State-of-the-Art IoT Traffic Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19830/) (2024)
- [Towards Requirements Engineering for RAG Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07553/) (2025)
- [PAKTON: A Multi-Agent Framework for Question Answering in Long Legal Agreements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00608/) (2025)
- [Geolog-IA: Conversational System for Academic Theses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02653/) (2025)
- [An LLM-Powered AI Agent Framework for Holistic IoT Traffic Interpretation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13925/) (2025)
- [LPCAN: Lightweight Pyramid Cross-Attention Network for Rail Surface Defect Detection Using RGB-D Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09118/) (2026)
- [Knowledge-Embedded and Hypernetwork-Guided Few-Shot Substation Meter Defect Image Generation Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09238/) (2026)
- [MA-LipNet: Multi-Dimensional Attention Networks for Robust Lipreading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.20881/) (2026)
- [The Diffusion Duet: Harmonizing Dual Channels with Wavelet Suppression for Image Separation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13361/) (2026)
- [Detecting Deepfakes with Multivariate Soft Blending and CLIP-based Image-Text Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15903/) (2026)
- [Efficient Image Super-Resolution with Multi-Scale Spatial Adaptive Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00118/) (2026)
- [A Deformable Attention-Based Detection Transformer with Cross-Scale Feature Fusion for Industrial Coil Spring Inspection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13429/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown versatility in various Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, including their potential as effective question-answering systems. However, to provide precise and relevant information in response to specific customer queries in industry settings, LLMs require access to a comprehensive knowledge base to avoid hallucinations. Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) emerges as a promising technique to address this challenge. Yet, developing an accurate question-answering framework for real-world applications using RAG entails several challenges: 1) data availability issues, 2) evaluating the quality of generated content, and 3) the costly nature of human evaluation. In this paper, we introduce an end-to-end framework that employs LLMs with RAG capabilities for industry use cases. Given a customer query, the proposed system retrieves relevant knowledge documents and leverages them, along with previous chat history, to generate response suggestions for customer service agents in the contact centers of a major retail company. Through comprehensive automated and human evaluations, we show that this solution outperforms the current BERT-based algorithms in accuracy and relevance. Our findings suggest that RAG-based LLMs can be an excellent support to human customer service representatives by lightening their workload.