Canned responses
Save the replies you send constantly and insert them in a keystroke.
When to use one
Canned responses are for replies whose wording you want to control exactly — return instructions, warranty terms, escalation acknowledgements. Anything where being slightly off matters.
If a question is common but the answer is factual and stable, it usually belongs in the knowledge base instead, so the AI can answer it without an agent at all. Canned responses are for the human path; knowledge base articles are for the automated one. See Train the AI.
Using one
Open the reply box on any ticket and choose the canned response picker. Pick a response and it is inserted at the cursor, so you can add a personal opening line before and after.
Writing good ones
- Leave a gap for the specific. Start with a placeholder for the customer's actual situation rather than a generic greeting. A reply that opens with the specific problem reads as written by a person.
- Keep them short. Long canned replies get sent unedited and read as boilerplate.
- One purpose each. A response that tries to cover three scenarios gets edited every time it is used, which defeats the point.
- Review quarterly. Policy changes silently invalidate saved text.
Signatures
Your signature is appended automatically on email replies. Do not include it in the canned response body, or customers get it twice.
A note on tone
Canned responses bypass the brand voice the AI uses, because you wrote them literally. If you have tuned a brand voice, read your saved responses against it occasionally — it is common for them to drift years out of date while the AI's tone stays current.