Email Responder
An AI that drafts replies to inbound mail in your voice, starting in shadow mode.
The Email Responder reads your inbound mail and drafts replies in your voice. It is deliberately conservative: nothing is written or sent until you switch it on, and until then it runs in shadow mode so you can read what it would have said.
The Email Responder is Growth and above.
In this guide
- Getting to the page
- Shadow mode
- Binding an inbox
- The Overview tab
- Configuring an inbox
- Identity & voice
- Behaviour
- Knowledge
- Profiles
- Rules
- Do not reply
- Activity
- Learning from your sent mail
- Going live
- Troubleshooting
1. Getting to the page
Click Email Responder in the CRM section, at /client/email-responder.
The header reads Email responder — "Drafts replies to your inbound mail — nothing is written or sent until you switch it on." A status indicator on the right shows whether any inbox is live.
2. Shadow mode
Every bound inbox starts in shadow mode. The responder reads incoming mail and produces a draft reply, and then does nothing with it. The draft is recorded in Activity so you can read it against the real message.
Shadow mode is the whole point of the design: you get evidence of how it would behave on your actual mail, on your actual customers, before it touches anything.
3. Binding an inbox
Bind a mailbox you have already connected in the Inbox. Each bound inbox is configured separately — a sales mailbox and a support mailbox should not answer the same way.
The bound-inbox list sits on the left, with a status badge per inbox. Selecting one opens its settings on the right.
4. The Overview tab
The cross-inbox dashboard: how many messages each inbox has seen, how many drafts were produced, how many were sent once live, and where attention is needed. Selecting an inbox here jumps to its configuration with it pre-selected.
5. Configuring an inbox
Seven tabs per inbox.
Identity & voice
Who the responder is writing as: the name it signs off with, the role it claims, and the tone it writes in. This is what stops replies reading like a generic assistant.
Behaviour
What it is allowed to do. How far it will go in answering versus deferring to a person; whether it books, quotes or promises anything; how it handles a message it does not understand; and when it should escalate rather than reply.
Knowledge
What it may draw on when answering — your knowledge base documents, your company profile, your services catalogue. Answers are grounded in this rather than invented.
Profiles
Per-sender handling. A known customer, a supplier and a cold pitch are three different conversations, and profiles are how the responder tells them apart.
Rules
Conditional handling: when a message matches a rule, do this instead. Route it, tag it, escalate it, or use a different reply approach.
Do not reply
The suppression list. Addresses and domains the responder must never answer — no-reply addresses, internal domains, anyone who asked not to be contacted. A message from a suppressed sender is read and filed but never drafted against.
Activity
Every message the responder has seen for this inbox, its draft, and what happened to it. In shadow mode this is the whole record. Once live, it is the audit trail.
6. Learning from your sent mail
Learn from sent mail reads your outbox and derives how you actually write — greetings, sign-offs, sentence length, formality, the things you always mention. The result populates both Identity & voice and Behaviour, and is presented for review before it is applied.
This is far more effective than describing your own tone from memory.
7. Going live
When the shadow drafts read the way you want:
- Open the inbox in the list.
- Switch it on.
- Watch Activity for the first day.
You can switch an inbox back to shadow mode at any time without losing its configuration.
Go live on one inbox at a time. A support mailbox is usually the safest first candidate: high volume, repetitive questions, low downside.
8. Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The page isn't in the nav | Growth and above | See Plans & Subscriptions |
| "No inbox is bound yet" | No mailbox bound to the responder | Bind one on the left |
| Drafts are being produced but nothing sends | The inbox is in shadow mode | Switch it on |
| Replies are too generic | Identity & voice is thin | Run Learn from sent mail |
| It answered something it shouldn't have | Behaviour is too permissive, or a rule is missing | Tighten Behaviour; add a rule |
| It replied to a no-reply address | That address is not suppressed | Add it under Do not reply |
| Answers are wrong on facts | The knowledge sources are missing or stale | Check the Knowledge tab |
Related guides
- Inbox — connecting the mailbox
- Templates — fixed copy, as opposed to generated replies
- Knowledge Base — the same idea for voice agents