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Customer support · SME · Automation · 2026
Automatic replies that don't read as automatic
60% of incoming email was four repeated questions. They now answer themselves, with that customer's actual details, and only what deserves a person reaches one.
Described by sector, with no identifiable data.
Repeat emails
Self-answered
Replies
With real data
What escalates
With context
AI credits
None
Power AutomateOutlook 365SharePointDataverse
Context
- A shared inbox took enquiries all day and most of them were the same questions.
- Answering by hand consumed one person's morning, and replies still took hours.
The problem
- The classic autoresponder — "we have received your message" — annoys more than it helps: it solves nothing and the customer writes again.
- The enquiries that did need a person got buried among the repeated ones.
What I did
- Incoming mail classified by subject, sender and keyword rules, with no dependency on AI credits.
- Replies with real data: their order status, their expected date or their document, pulled at the moment of replying.
- Explicit escalation: anything that fits no pattern goes to a person, flagged and with the context already gathered.
- Every automatic reply is logged in the thread, so whoever picks it up later sees what the customer was already told.
Result
- Repeated questions are answered in minutes with the actual figure, not an acknowledgement.
- The person on the inbox only sees what genuinely needs judgement.