Customer service
Basic

Automated email replies with AI

The agent reads incoming email, classifies it, and answers the questions that already have a written answer. What needs a person still reaches the inbox.

Time to implement

3 to 4 hours

Estimated cost

10 to 20 EUR / month

Tools

4 in the stack

The stack

Built with tools you already run

n8n
Gmail
OpenAI (GPT-4)
Google Sheets

The problem

You answer the same five questions every day.

Opening hours, returns policy, stock, how to get there, delivery times. This is the natural ground for AI chat agents, and if you add up the minutes the team spends writing the same reply again, it comes to hours a week.

And even then, the emails that matter, the one who wants to buy, the complaint, the partner with a proposal, sit in the middle of the noise and are read late.

The flow

How it works, step by step

01

A Gmail trigger picks up new email

n8n checks the inbox every few minutes.

02

The AI classifies the request

FAQ, sales enquiry, complaint, partner, spam.

03

If it is an FAQ, it answers

From your own written content, not from what the model imagines.

04

If it matters, it routes

A label in Gmail plus a notification to whoever handles it.

05

Everything is logged

So you can see later what was answered automatically.

Walkthrough

The build in detail

01

The Gmail trigger

n8n reads the inbox every few minutes and picks up unread messages arriving at a specific address, so a personal mailbox is never touched.

02

Classification

The model receives the email and a prompt listing the categories that exist in your business. It returns one label, and nothing else. Keeping this step separate from the answer is what makes the workflow debuggable.

03

The source of the answers

The frequent questions live in a sheet you control. When something is classified as an FAQ, the answer is composed from that sheet. If the question is not covered there, it is not answered automatically.

04

Sending the reply

The Gmail node replies in the same thread, in the tone of the business, and signs as the company rather than pretending to be a person.

05

What must not be automated

Complaints and sales enquiries get a label and an instant notification, never an automatic reply. An automated answer to a complaint makes it worse, and that is the rule this workflow exists to protect.

What to expect

What this case delivers

The repetitive questions stop reaching a person
Replies in seconds instead of hours
An inbox that only holds what needs deciding
One consistent tone, because the source is written down

Blueprint and video in preparation

We are preparing the .json file you can import into n8n, and the video walkthrough. Want this case running in your company already? Book a call.

Book a call

Want this case in your company?

The production version includes integration with the systems you already run, monitoring, a fallback path and support. It is usually working within a week.

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