Auto-Replies are a type of auto-responder in which eDesk replies automatically to customer messages that arrive after your office has closed for the day.
 


This help file will guide you through creating Auto-Reply templates that eDesk uses to auto-respond to customers outside office hours.

Before you start

 
  • You’ll need to have access to templates in your Settings in order to view, create and edit templates. If you don’t have access, you can request it from an Admin user within your business.  

Note: To find out about the other types of templates that eDesk supports, click here.

01 Creating Auto-Reply Templates
 

  1. To create a new Auto-Reply template from scratch, go to Settings → Smart Tools → Templates, click + Add Template, and select Auto Replies from the menu.

    Select Auto Replies from the menu

    Pro-tip: You can also create a new template from a copy of an existing template by selecting the ellipsis at the top or the ellipsis in a row.  

  2. In the Template section, enter a unique name for the template.

    Note: Template Type isn’t used for Auto-Reply templates, so you can leave it unchanged.

  3. Click the Active Template checkbox to make the template active and therefore available for use. Inactive Auto-Reply templates are not sent to customers by eDesk.

  4. In the Message and Language section, select the language and enter text, images, and hyperlinks into the Message field. For instructions on language and the use of snippets, click here.

    Note: You don’t need to populate the Subject field for Auto-Reply templates.

    Pro Tip: Within the message body, we recommend that you don't use phrases such as: "We are currently away from the office" or "Our office hours are....." Instead, use generic phrases such as "We have received your message and will be in touch." This approach protects your SLA in marketplaces that use Auto-Reply detectors to discourage automated responses, which look for these key phrases and may not approve the message as a valid response to reset the SLA.

  5. Optionally, click the Attach Invoice checkbox to automatically attach the customer’s invoice to the Auto-Reply.

  6. Optionally, complete the fields in the Usage Conditions section. Click here for a description of each field.  You can use these fields to tell eDesk to respond with this template only for tickets that match these fields, e.g., tickets for a particular marketplace.

  7. Now that you have completed the General settings, you can set up the time periods for which eDesk will auto-respond to customers with this Auto-Reply template.  

    Click the Auto Replies tab and in the Date & Time Conditions section, click + Add weekly time restriction.              
    Set up Date & Time conditions

    Set a day period by clicking on the day fields and then selecting the start and end days from the menu.

    Set a start and finish time by clicking the time fields and then dragging the sliders horizontally to select the Hour and Minute.  For example, Monday 6pm till Tuesday 8am.

    Click + Add weekly time restriction to add another day/time period for Autoreplies. 

  8. In the Autoresponder Options section:

    - Delay
    If you want your auto-response to look like a human response, you can tell eDesk to delay sending this template for x minutes.

    Pro-tip: You can use this to prevent Amazon from detecting your message as an auto-response.

    - Frequency
    Set Frequency if you want to prevent eDesk from auto-responding with the same template to every message about the same ticket. For Autoreply templates, it is common practice to select Autoreply every single incoming message but you can also select a frequency, for example, once every 6 hours.

    - Exclude
    If you want to tell eDesk NOT to auto-respond with this template to messages from certain email addresses, enter them into the Exclude field, for example marie@xsellco.com, laura@xsellco.com. You can also exclude all email addresses from a certain domain by entering *@domain.com, for example, *@xsellco.com

    - Include the channel signature
    Tick this if you want to include the signature for the channel in the template.

    • Set a minimum delay for auto-responses. For example, if you set a minimum delay of 1, the eDesk will send the auto-response 1 minute after receiving the customer’s message. If you don’t set a minimum delay, eDesk will auto-respond immediately upon receipt of a message.

    • Optionally, if you want eDesk to send the auto-response at a random time, you can also configure the maximum delay field. In this case, if you set a minimum delay of 1 and a maximum delay of 4, then eDesk will auto-respond with this template between 1 and 4 minutes after it received the message.

  9. In the Misc section, you can instruct eDesk to change the status of the message to Waiting or Closed once it has auto-responded, or not to change the status at all. This does not change the status on the marketplace; once the template is sent, the marketplace status will update as normal.

    Note: The AI Settings tab is not applicable to Auto-Reply templates - you can ignore it.

  10. Finally, click Create Template to save the new template.
    All done! The new template is added to the list in Settings → Smart Tools → Templates,  and will be sent by eDesk during the specified day/time periods (step 7) for tickets that match the Usage Conditions (step 6).

Further Readings


To find out how to create auto-responders for holiday periods, click here.

To learn more about Manual-Usage Templates with eDesk, click here.