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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. Each reply ends with a short AI disclaimer unless you have switched it off.
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 — and so that it can follow a conversation a human has taken over — SquawkVoice maintains three 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 cannot stop the agent picking tickets up. The third rule is what makes an escalated conversation keep updating: it fires when an agent replies and when the ticket is resolved or closed, which is how SquawkVoice records the human’s replies on the transcript and knows when the conversation has finished. A connected mailbox therefore generates more traffic to SquawkVoice during a handoff than it used to.
Because the shape of these rules changed again in this release, all three 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 re-ordered them after the previous release, check the order in Freshdesk again. 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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One inbox, one agent

An inbox can be worked by exactly one AI agent. The rule is matched on the address, so the same mailbox reached through two different Freshdesk connections still counts once. A mailbox already claimed elsewhere is shown locked in the list, with an Already in use badge and the tooltip “This inbox is already connected to another agent. An inbox can only be connected to one agent at a time.” A mailbox the same agent already reaches another way reads Already connected.
This is enforced on existing data at upgrade. Where two agents had claimed the same address, the later claim is deleted and that agent silently stops working the mailbox. Check Email Configuration → Inbox on each of your email agents after the release and re-tick anything that was dropped.

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Unsubscribing a mailbox

Un-ticking a mailbox that still has open conversations asks what should happen to them first, and tells you how many are already with a person — for example “support@acme.com has 4 open email sessions, 2 already with a live agent.” Resolve & Unsubscribe is the only way out. Escalating conversations on the way out used to be offered and has been removed: escalating leaves a conversation open, which is the opposite of what unsubscribing needs to do, and there is nothing to escalate to for conversations already with a human.

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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. The AI disclaimer is the exception: it has a single text for every language and is not translated.
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. Check Handoff Platform at the top of the tab — see below.
  4. 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. The AI disclaimer goes below the handoff message, whether the agent escalates the thread or you do with Escalate in Email History. Replies a person sends after the handoff don’t carry it.

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The handoff platform

Handoff Platform sits at the top of the Handoff → Email tab and shows where an escalation goes. For email, the connected inbox decides it: a Freshdesk mailbox escalates through Freshdesk connections, listed as “Freshdesk — instance URL”. Until a mailbox is connected the picker is disabled and reads “Connect a mailbox under Email Configuration first — the inbox decides where an escalation goes.” Each channel keeps its own platform, so changing the platform for chat no longer moves email with it.

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The conversation stays open

Escalating is no longer the end of the conversation. The thread moves to an Escalated state and stays open while the person works the same Freshdesk ticket:
  • The AI stops replying — it does not interject while a human has the thread.
  • The human’s replies are recorded on the SquawkVoice transcript, attributed to them rather than to the agent.
  • The conversation is recorded as finished only when that person resolves or closes the ticket, or the inactivity window lapses. Its outcome, transcript and usage are all written at that point.
Escalations are therefore recorded at the human’s resolve time, not at the moment the agent handed over. Figures in Email Analytics and email history for a given period will not match what you saw before this change, and an escalation nobody ever closes stays out of reporting until the inactivity window fires.
An escalated conversation is also subject to the handoff time limits: four hours with no messages, or twenty-four hours from the handoff, whichever comes first. When either lapses the conversation is completed and its post-conversation actions run.
The tags SquawkVoice writes on a Freshdesk ticket to mark a conversation escalated or resolved are maintained for you, and are quietly restored if they are removed by hand. Deleting a tag is not a way to hand a thread back to the AI.
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. Outcomes belong to the handoff platform selected above them.
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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AI disclaimer

An email agent ends the replies it writes with a short AI disclaimer, so your customers can tell the message came from AI rather than from a person. It sits after the body of the reply as a separate paragraph of small grey text and, unless you change it, reads:
This email was generated by AI. Verify important information
The disclaimer is set per agent, on the AI Disclaimer card in Email Configuration → Config, below the inactivity window setting. The switch at the top of the card turns it on or off for this agent. Below the switch, Disclaimer text replaces the default with your own wording, up to 2,000 characters. A counter beside the label shows how many you have used; go over the limit and a message under the field says how many characters to cut, and the text is not saved until you shorten it. Leave the field blank to use the default. Spaces at the start and end are dropped, so a field of nothing but spaces counts as blank. The field is greyed out while the switch is off. Changes save as you make them.

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Which emails carry it

The disclaimer is never sent on its own: a reply with nothing in it gets no disclaimer.
The disclaimer is on by default for every email agent, including agents you set up before it existed, with nothing to switch on — so your customers see it on your agents’ replies without you changing anything. Check Email Configuration → Config on each of your email agents to reword it or turn it off.
  • One text for every language. The disclaimer has no Message to Send in Language boxes and is not translated, so the English default, or your own wording, appears exactly as written on a reply in any language.
  • Plain text only. {{variables}} are not filled in, HTML and Markdown appear exactly as typed, and line breaks run together into a single line.
  • Separate from the chat widget. The chat widget’s AI Disclaimer is a different setting — see Chat Widget. Changing one does not change the other.

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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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Follow-ups before abandonment

Rather than waiting in silence for the window to lapse, the agent sends two automatic follow-ups in the same email thread. Timing derives from that agent’s own Close After value, landing at roughly one third and two thirds of the way through, and the second always goes out before the thread closes. The first reads “Just following up on your recent message — we haven’t heard back and wanted to check whether you still need help. Reply here and we’ll pick it right back up.” The second reads “This is a final check-in on your request. If we don’t hear back we’ll close this out for now, but you’re always welcome to reply and reopen it anytime.” Both are signed off with the agent’s name, or with “the team” where no name was recorded. If the customer replies to either one, the conversation simply picks up where it left off. The second follow-up doubles as the abandonment notice — there is no separate message when the window actually closes, so before this change an abandoned thread ended with no outbound mail at all.
This sends real mail to your customers and is on for every email agent, with no setting to switch on.
  • The only lever is the inactivity window, and it is day-granular, so it collapses. Moving Close After from 3 days to 4 days moves neither follow-up; moving from 6 days to 7 days does not either. Only 5 days and 6–7 days shift the cadence at all.
  • The copy is fixed English. It is not your Closing message or Handoff Message, it does not honour the agent’s configured languages, and there is no per-language variant — so a Spanish-language email agent still follows up in English.
  • Threads that had already gone quiet are in scope. The sweep measures wall-clock inactivity, so a thread already silent past both intervals receives both follow-ups roughly an hour apart on the first two sweeps after the upgrade, rather than spaced at the configured intervals. Expect your email send volume and abandoned-conversation figures to move.
Follow-ups apply to email agents working a connected Freshdesk helpdesk inbox. They go out without the AI disclaimer, even when it is switched on. They do not appear as separate entries in email history or Email Analytics — the thread’s transcript shows them as agent messages.

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How a conversation ends

Every email conversation finishes in one of three ways: Supervisors can also end a thread by hand from email history, with Escalate or Resolve — see Email Analytics. A conversation already with a person is still open and still resolvable; it offers Resolve only.

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How email is billed

An email conversation is charged as one email session:
  • One charge per conversation, however many replies it takes, and whether or not it is escalated to a human.
  • Charged when the conversation starts, not when it ends — so your wallet balance reflects a conversation while it is still running, and auto top-up can fire earlier than you might expect.
  • Refunded if the agent fails to produce a reply.
On a Pro (Commit & Save) plan the per-email-session rate follows your commitment, the same way voice minutes and chat sessions do. Your current rate is on the plan comparison grid at Manage → Billing → Overview, in the Per-Email Session Rate row.
An email agent needs enough balance to cover one email session before it will answer. When the wallet cannot cover it — or the account is not entitled to email — the agent stops replying and leaves the thread for a human. The ticket sits in your mailbox unanswered and untagged: there is no auto-reply, nothing sent to the sender, no banner in the Studio, and no row in Optimize → Advanced → Email History. An unanswered ticket is the only symptom, so keep auto top-up enabled if you rely on email.
See Reading Your Invoice for how email usage appears on your bill.

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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, the handoff notices, and a human agent’s replies attributed to them. Switch on In-progress Only and you can step into a live thread yourself with Escalate or Resolve; Escalated Only shows the conversations currently with a person, which offer 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.