Use case: email support
Automate the support emails your team answers over and over
Forward your support address to an intoCHAT agent. It answers the routine questions in the customer’s own thread, from the content you trained it on, and passes everything that needs judgment to your team, who pick it up in one Inbox.
Visitor: Subject: Shipping to Switzerland. Hi, do you ship to Switzerland, and how long does it take? Thanks, Marco
Agent: Hi Marco, yes, we ship to Switzerland. Delivery takes 3 to 5 business days after dispatch, and customs fees are shown at checkout. You can find all destinations on our shipping page.
Visitor: Great. I also need to change the delivery address on an order I placed yesterday. Can you do that?
Agent: I can’t change an order myself, but I can pass this thread to our team so they can update the address. Shall I do that? They will reply to this email address.
Visitor: Yes please.
Agent: Done: our team has your request and the conversation so far, and will reply to you here by email.
The support inbox is full of questions you have already answered
Open any support mailbox and most of what you find has been answered many times before: delivery times, return windows, how to reset a password, whether a product works with something else. Each email still has to be read, looked up and typed out by hand, and the few that really need a person (a complaint, a billing mistake, a special request) wait in the same queue behind them. Customers who write in the evening or at the weekend wait until someone is back. Canned responses and filters only move the work around. Someone still has to pick the right template and check it fits. Email support automation works when the routine emails are answered completely without your team, in the thread the customer started, and the rest reach the right person with the context attached. That is the workflow intoCHAT is built for.
What changes for your support team
The AI takes the repetitive emails. Your team keeps the ones where a person makes the difference.
Routine emails are answered without anyone touching them
Questions your website, policies and help articles already answer get a full reply in the customer’s thread, at any hour, without a teammate opening the email.
Your team sees only what needs a person
When a customer asks for a person, or the agent can’t help and the customer wants someone to follow up, the thread is handed to your team and lands in the Inbox as open, ready to assign.
One knowledge base for chat and email
The agent that answers on your website answers your email too, with the same sources, instructions and actions. You train and correct it once, and both channels improve.
Answers stay within your rules
The agent answers from your content and follows your instructions on what it must never promise, such as refunds, discounts or delivery dates you can’t guarantee.
Gaps in your content become visible
Every email thread is a conversation you can read. Questions the agent struggled with are collected under Questions to improve, so you know what to add next.
The workflow in intoCHAT, step by step
Decide which emails the AI answers
Go through a week of support email and sort it: questions answered by your content (shipping, returns, opening hours, how-tos, order status) go to the AI; complaints, billing disputes and exceptions stay with your team. Write that split into the agent’s instructions, including what it must never promise and when to offer a person.
Train the agent on what your team already knows
Crawl your website and help pages, upload files, import Notion pages or Google Drive files, and add Q&A pairs for answers that must be exact. From Starter, import solved Zendesk or Freshdesk tickets, so the agent learns from replies your team has already written.
Point your support address at the agent
Create the agent’s email address on the Share tab and forward your existing support address to it from Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook or Microsoft 365. Customers keep writing to the address they know. On Pro, replies can come from your own domain.
Let it answer, and connect your systems where it helps
The agent replies in the thread and sees the earlier emails of that thread. Server-side API actions, procedures and order lookups from Shopify or WooCommerce work by email as they do in the chat, so an order status question can be answered with live data.
Hand the rest to your team
Switch on Offer hand-off by email. Threads that need a person go to your team and into the Inbox, where you set status, priority, tags and an assignee, and reply in the customer’s thread from intoCHAT. With Zendesk, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Gorgias or Help Scout connected, a ticket is opened there too.
Review and improve every week
Read email threads on the Conversations tab, open Why this answer to see which sources a reply used, turn a weak reply into a Q&A pair with Improve answer, and work through Questions to improve on the Knowledge tab.
Setup checklist and limits
Plan: Starter or higher
The agent’s email address is included from Starter ($19 a month, 2,500 messages). Sending from your own domain needs Pro ($49 a month, 10,000 messages). After a downgrade to Free, the address is kept but emails aren’t answered.
Write instructions for email
Tell the agent what it handles, what it must not promise and when to offer a person. The same instructions apply in the chat, so keep them channel-neutral or say what differs.
Organise the Inbox
Agree on tags and priorities, use the built-in views such as My open and Unassigned, or save your own. On Pro, inbox routing assigns threads to teams and teammates, and triggers can tag, prioritise or notify by email or Slack.
Outside working hours (Pro)
With inbox teams and shifts, a thread that reaches your team outside its hours can get one auto-reply in the thread saying the team will see it when they are back.
What email can’t show
Forms, the lead form, booking times, rich replies, the cart, client actions, follow-up questions and source links are not used by email. Buttons and product cards from actions are written as links.
Emails the agent leaves alone
Out-of-office replies, mailing lists, bulk mail and bounces are ignored. Emails whose sender fails DMARC are saved for your team without an AI reply. Attachments aren’t read; the transcript notes how many there were.
Volume limits
One sender can send up to 20 emails an hour to one agent’s address, and one address takes up to 300 an hour. A reply that takes longer than about 40 seconds to write isn’t sent. A private agent doesn’t answer email.
What a reply costs
Each AI reply counts as one message with the default model, two with Claude Sonnet or Gemini Pro, five with Claude Opus. Your team’s replies don’t count. Each AI reply ends with a short line saying the AI assistant wrote it.
Frequently asked questions
What is email support automation?
Email support automation means routine customer emails are answered without a person writing each reply, while the rest still reach your team. With intoCHAT, an AI agent trained on your content answers in the customer’s thread and hands threads that need a person to your team, by email and in a shared Inbox.
Which emails should I let the AI answer?
Start with questions your content answers completely: shipping, returns policy, opening hours, product details, how-tos and, with a connected Shopify or WooCommerce store, order status. Keep complaints, billing disputes and exceptions with your team, and tell the agent in its instructions to offer a person for those.
Do customers need a new email address?
No. You forward the support address they already use to the agent’s address from Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook or Microsoft 365. Customers write as before and get the answer in the same thread. On Pro, replies can also come from your own domain.
How does my team take over a thread?
With hand-off by email on, the agent offers to pass the thread to your team when the customer asks for a person or it can’t help. The thread enters the Inbox. Anyone who handles conversations (owner, admins, editors) can reply from intoCHAT; the customer gets the reply in the thread, and the AI stays silent there for 72 hours, until you click Resume AI, or until the conversation is marked Solved.
Can I keep using Zendesk or another helpdesk?
Yes. Connect Zendesk, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Gorgias or Help Scout and each hand-off also opens a ticket there with an AI summary and the conversation. Replies in the helpdesk don’t sync back to intoCHAT, so your team answers the customer from the helpdesk. From Starter, the agent can also learn from your solved Zendesk or Freshdesk tickets.
Can the AI do things, not just answer?
Yes, within what you connect. By email the agent can call your server-side API actions, follow procedures (3 per agent on Starter, 10 on Pro) and look up orders in Shopify or WooCommerce after checking the order number and email. It can’t read attachments, and it can’t use forms, booking times or the cart, which only work in the chat.
What does email support automation cost with intoCHAT?
The email address is included from Starter at $19 a month with 2,500 messages; Pro is $49 a month with 10,000 messages and your own sending domain. Each AI reply uses one message with the default model, more with a larger model. Your team’s replies are free.
Will customers know they got an AI reply?
Yes. Each AI reply ends with a short line saying it was answered by your AI assistant, in English, German, French, Italian or Spanish depending on the conversation. By default the agent replies in the language the customer writes in.
Take the routine out of your support inbox
Create your agent free and train it on your website. Upgrade to Starter, forward your support address and send it a test email.
Create your agent freeFree plan, no credit card needed.