Create a Manual Usage Template to help your teams respond to customers quickly.
 


This help file will guide you through creating these ready-to-go templates that you can select and send.

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 more general information regarding Templates in eDesk, click here.
 

01 Directions
 

Manual Usage templates are listed in the Use Template section within the ticket.  Simply select the template from the menu (or use the _ shortcut) to populate the Reply, Note, or External boxes with the template, and then click Send.Note: to find out more about replying to customers with eDesk, click here.

02 Creating Manual Usage templates

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

    Pro-tip: You can also create a new template from a copy of an existing template. To copy one of eDesk’s sample templates, click the ellipsis at the top of the screen and select Create Message Templates From Our Samples, or to copy one of your own existing templates, click the ellipsis in the row for the template and select Copy template.

  2. First you'll need to fill in the General information for the template. In the Template section, enter a unique name for the template, and select at least one Template Type from the menu. This determines where the template is listed for selection by Support Agents in eDesk:

    • Consumer - available in the Reply box for contacting customers.

    • Internal - available in the Note box when leaving internal notes.

    • External - available in External messages, when you are sending to another email address but staying within the ticket.

    • Chat Consumer - available when using live chat to talk to a customer. To learn more about eDesk’s Live Chat, click here.

  3. Click the Active Template checkbox to make the template available for use.
    Inactive Templates are not listed in tickets and are therefore unavailable for use. 

  4. In the Message and Language section, choose a language from the Language menu.

  5. Enter the Subject of the email. This is used only when a Support Agent initiates the contact with the customer. When the template is used to respond to a customer message, the Subject field is “Re. [subject in the customer’s original message]”.

  6. Then enter the template text, hyperlinks, and images into the Message field. The text should be in the language that was selected in step 4.

    Pro-tip: You can also automatically pull in information about the specific customer or order, or even a commonly used phrase. This is done by including Snippets in the template, for example, #consumer_firstname# or #thanksforcontactingus#“. To learn all about Snippets, click here. To include a snippet, copy from the list on the right and paste it into the Message field.

    Note: Due to Amazon restrictions, some snippets will not populate customer information for Amazon channels.

  7. Click the Attach Invoice checkbox to automatically attach the customer’s invoice to the template.

  8. In the Usage Conditions section, you can tell eDesk to show this template only in appropriate tickets, e.g., tickets for a particular marketplace.

    • Channel: show only for a specific channel(s). Leave blank to show this template for all channels.

    • Subject must contain: show for messages with similar subjects.

    • Ticket Type: show for messages that fall into a specific ticket type.

    • Order Status: Some snippets will be populated only when the order has a specific status. Show this template for tickets here with this status only.

    • Order fulfilment: Separate whether the template can be used for FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) or FBM (Fulfilled By Merchant) orders. This option is for AMAZON ONLY.

    • Delivery Date: Allow messages to only be sent within/outside the estimated delivery date.

  9. Click the Can only be used if the ticket has never had a reply checkbox to show the template for new, incoming messages only, and ensure that the template is not used more than once for the same customer ticket.

    Pro-tip: Optionally, if you want eDesk to ‘suggest’ this template in relevant tickets, or even allow your teams to be able to select and send this template with one click, click the AI Settings tab and select an AI category. To find out more about AI templates, click here.
    The AI Settings tab is available for all template categories (see step 2). 
    10. Click Create Template to save the new template.

You're done! The new template is added to the list in Settings → Smart Tools → Templates and is displayed in the tickets that match the Usage Conditions (step 8) or AI category (step 9). 

Further Readings


To find out more about Rule-Only Templates with eDesk, click here.

To learn more about Out-of-Office Templates with eDesk, click here.