Choosing an AI API for customer support

What customer support needs

• Answers grounded in your own documentation
• A consistent, polite tone
• A clear hand-off to a human

Models that fit

Somnus column uses the minimum 2× credit; larger top-ups go further.

Cost example

1,000 requests of about 1,500 input and 400 output tokens on Claude Haiku 4.5 cost about $3.50 at list price — roughly $1.75 with Somnus credit.

Tips

• Put your policies in the system prompt and relevant articles in the user message.
• Ask the model to say when it doesn't know rather than guess.
• Log conversations so you can improve the prompt over time.

Common mistakes

• Letting the model invent refund or policy terms.
• Stuffing every help article into every request.

Example

from openai import OpenAI
import os

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=os.environ["SOMNUS_API_KEY"],
    base_url="https://gateway-production-c837.up.railway.app/v1",
)

resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-5",
    messages=[
      {"role": "system", "content": "You are an expert assistant. Be precise and concise."},
      {"role": "user", "content": "A customer asks how to reset their password. Answer using our help article."}
    ],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)

Questions

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