# ShopEase: A Generative AI-Based Multi-Agent Framework for Intelligent Enterprise Customer Support Using Hybrid Retrieval-Augmented Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.13856 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13856/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Agentic RAG, agents and memory, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 16 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Sep 2026.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [Agentic RAG, agents and memory](https://mlsanity.com/rag/agentic-rag-agents-and-memory/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04906/) (2020)
- [Billion-scale similarity search with GPUs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08734/) (2017)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10997/) (2023)
- [AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08155/) (2023)
- [Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11511/) (2023)
- [LLM-Based Multi-Agent Systems for Software Engineering: Literature Review, Vision and the Road Ahead](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04834/) (2024)
- [Learn-by-interact: A Data-Centric Framework for Self-Adaptive Agents in Realistic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10893/) (2025)
- [AgentNet: Decentralized Evolutionary Coordination for LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00587/) (2025)
- [Human-in-the-loop Artificial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.08191/) (2017)
- [Multi-Agent Actor-Critic Generative AI for Query Resolution and Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13164/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [CredWise: A Controlled Agentic Decision-Intelligence Framework for Explainable and Auditable Credit-Risk Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37223/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Enterprise customer support systems must answer customer questions correctly, retrieve the right policy information, use customer context, and pass difficult cases to human agents when needed. This paper presents ShopEase, a Generative AI-based multi-agent framework for enterprise customer support. The system combines six components: Intent, CRM, Memory, Hybrid RAG, Escalation, and Supervisor, and uses LLaMA 3.2 running locally through Ollama for response generation. The retrieval module combines FAISS (dense retrieval) and BM25 (sparse retrieval), and six configurations are evaluated: BM25-only, FAISS-only, Fair RRF, Weighted RRF, RRF with Cross-Encoder, and Top-10 Hybrid with Cross-Encoder. Instead of using a fixed mapping between intent and policy, the policy category is decided directly from the retrieved documents. The system was evaluated on 2632 held-out customer queries across six categories: Refund, Return, Shipping, Cancellation, Damaged Product, and Unknown. FAISS-only achieved the highest accuracy of 85.37% (2247 correct predictions), closely followed by Weighted RRF at 85.07%. BM25-only achieved only 55.74% accuracy. Adding cross-encoder reranking did not improve results: RRF with Cross-Encoder reached 83.24%, and Top-10 Hybrid with Cross-Encoder reached 81.88%, while also increasing response latency. Category-level analysis shows strong performance on Shipping, Cancellation, and Return, while Unknown queries remain the main source of errors. Statistical testing using McNemar's test shows no significant difference between FAISS-only and Weighted RRF, though both perform significantly better than Fair RRF and the cross-encoder configurations. Overall, dense retrieval gives the best accuracy on this dataset, and additional reranking adds processing time without improving classification performance.