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Email is the third channel your AI agents can work, alongside voice and chat. An email agent picks up a ticket from a mailbox in your Freshdesk account, replies in the thread the way a support colleague would, and finally either resolves the conversation or escalates it to a human. The channel is available to every account — there is nothing to request and no provisioning step. What an agent needs is a Freshdesk connection and a mailbox to watch. Everything else an email agent answers with is what you have already built: the same FAQs, the same knowledge groups, and the same in-conversation actions that drive your voice and chat conversations.

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How an email conversation flows

1

A ticket arrives

A customer emails the mailbox you have ticked for the agent, and Freshdesk creates a ticket.
2

The agent reads the thread

It works from the message history, its FAQs, and its knowledge groups. Where it needs live data — an order status, an account balance — it runs one of its in-conversation actions.
3

The agent replies in the thread

The reply goes out as a normal Freshdesk reply, so the customer sees one continuous email conversation rather than a separate channel.
4

The customer replies, or does not

Each new customer reply is another turn: the agent reads the thread again and answers again.
5

The conversation ends

The agent resolves the conversation, escalates it to a human, or — if the customer stops replying — it ends on inactivity.

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Before you start

Make sure you have:
  • An agent built and saved in Build → AI Agents
  • A Freshdesk account containing the mailbox you want the agent to work
  • The Freshdesk connection set up in Manage → Connected Apps (see Connected Apps)
Both halves are required. An agent only starts working email once Freshdesk is connected and a mailbox is ticked on the agent. Until then nothing is picked up.

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1. Connect Freshdesk

If Freshdesk is not connected yet:
  1. Open Studio → Manage → Connected Apps.
  2. Find the FreshDesk card and click Connect.
  3. Enter your Domain and API Key.
  4. Click Connect. The credentials are validated before they are saved, and the connection then appears in the Connected Accounts list.
One connection serves every agent in the workspace, so this is a one-time job per Freshdesk account.

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Automation rules in your Freshdesk account

So that the agent sees new tickets, SquawkVoice maintains two automation rules inside your own Freshdesk account. They are pinned to position 1 and named to carry a [DO NOT DELETE, DO NOT REORDER] marker, so reordering rules in Freshdesk can no longer stop the agent picking tickets up.
Because the shape of these rules changed in this release, both are deleted and re-created the next time each connected mailbox syncs after the upgrade — and they land above your own automation rules. If you rely on one of your own rules running first on the same tickets, check the order in Freshdesk afterwards. Where an account rejects the pinned position, the rules are re-created unpositioned so coverage is never lost.

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2. Choose a mailbox

Email is configured on the agent, in the Email Configuration card in the agent’s Modality section — described there as “Triage and reply to email with your AI agent.”
  1. Open your agent in Studio → Build → AI Agents.
  2. Go to Email Configuration → Inbox.
  3. Under Freshdesk mailboxes, tick the mailbox this agent should work.
If nothing is listed, the panel reads:
No Freshdesk accounts connected Go to Manage → Connected Apps → Freshdesk to connect an account, then return here.
That is the cue to complete step 1 first.
Give each agent its own mailbox where you can. A mailbox with a clear purpose — billing, deliveries, technical support — lets you keep that agent’s FAQs, knowledge and actions tightly scoped, which is what makes its replies accurate.

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3. What the agent uses to answer

There is nothing email-specific to teach the agent. An email agent draws on exactly the same configuration as the same agent on voice and chat: See Knowledge Base for adding FAQs, documents and web content to a knowledge group, and linking that group to an agent.
Keep the FAQ list lean. Because the agent’s whole FAQ list is included in every reply it composes, a very long list makes each email turn cost more. Anything long-form or reference-shaped belongs in a knowledge group instead, where it is searched rather than carried.

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Greeting and Sign-off

Greeting & Sign-off is organized as Voice, Chat and Email tabs. Your existing voice and chat wording is unchanged — it now simply lives under its own tab. The Email tab holds a single field:
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text
required
“Send this message when the email conversation is resolved or closed.”Pre-filled with “Thank you for contacting us. Have a great day!” It cannot be saved blank, and it accepts variables, so you can sign off with the customer’s name or a reference number.
Email conversations have no opening greeting to configure. The customer starts the thread, so the agent’s first message is already a reply.

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Multiple languages

Every language configured on the agent gets its own Message to Send in Language box, below the English default — for both the email closing message and the handoff message. When you add a language to the agent, the existing email closing message and email handoff message are translated into it automatically and the new boxes are pre-filled, exactly as voice and chat copy already was.
Auto-translation is a starting point, not a sign-off. Read the pre-filled boxes before you go live — brand names, product names and legal wording are the parts most worth checking.

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Handing a thread to a human

When the agent cannot finish a conversation itself, it escalates the thread. The reply that goes out at that moment is set in Handoff → Email → Handoff Message: “Reply with this message when the assistant escalates the email conversation to a human.”
  1. Open your agent and go to the Handoff section.
  2. Select the Email tab.
  3. Fill in Message to Send in English (Default), plus one Message to Send in Language box for each configured language.
Variables can be inserted into the message, so the handoff reply can name the customer or quote their reference.
Email escalation is always available to the agent, even when the agent’s voice Transfer toggle is switched off. That toggle governs transferring a live call to a person; it does not hold back an email thread.

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Outcomes

Outcomes are how the agent records the way a conversation finished — and how those conversations are grouped in your reporting. Email outcomes live in Handoff → Email, under Outcome options: “Map how the agent escalates email conversations to a human.” Two outcomes are built in and cannot be edited or removed: You can add your own outcomes alongside them — one per situation you want to be able to count later, such as a refund request or a delivery complaint that always needs a person.
Custom email outcome names must be unique regardless of capitalisation, including against the two built-in names. Re-using a name — even with different capitalisation — is rejected when you save.

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The inactivity window

An email conversation does not end when the agent sends a reply; it stays open waiting for the customer. The waiting period is set per agent in Email Configuration → Config.
  • Default: 72 hours
  • Range: 3 to 7 days (72 to 168 hours)
When the window lapses with no reply from the customer, the conversation ends and is recorded as User Abandoned.
Match the window to how your customers actually behave. A shorter window closes quiet threads promptly and keeps your in-progress list honest; a longer one gives customers a weekend to come back before the thread is filed as abandoned.

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How a conversation ends

Every email conversation finishes in one of three ways: Supervisors can also end a live thread by hand from email history, with Escalate or Resolve — see Email Analytics.

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Behaviour worth knowing

  • A reply is bounded work. The agent takes at most five rounds of knowledge-base look-ups and actions to compose one reply, allowing 60 seconds for each drafting pass and 30 seconds per action. On reaching a limit it sends its best reply rather than stalling the thread — so a thread never goes silent, though a reply written against a limit may be less complete than usual.
  • Replies that do more take longer. A reply that searches a knowledge base or calls an action is slower, and costs more per turn, than a plain reply.
  • Replies are deliberately concise. Email answers are kept short — point customers at a page or a document for anything genuinely long.
  • The agent works from the recent part of the thread, not its entire history. Very long back-and-forth threads are exactly the ones worth escalating to a person.
  • The whole FAQ list travels with every reply, so FAQ length shows up in the cost of every email turn.

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Where to watch email conversations

  • Optimize → Email Analytics tracks email containment, resolution rates and response-time trends.
  • Email History, under Advanced, lists individual threads with their replies and escalations, and opens a full transcript for any one of them — including the action log for actions the agent ran mid-thread. Switch on the in-progress filter and you can step into a live thread yourself with Escalate or Resolve.
Full detail on both views: Email Analytics.

Knowledge Base

Add the FAQs, documents and web content your email agent answers from.

Connected Apps

Manage the Freshdesk connection that supplies your email mailboxes.

Email Analytics

Track containment and resolution, and review individual email threads.