What AI email triage is
AI email triage reads each message that lands in a shared inbox, works out what it is, and routes it to the right person with the key details pulled out. It can draft a first reply for someone to approve. We build it for UK businesses whose enquiries arrive by email and wait too long for an answer.
What it does with each email
Every step below is logged, and any action it takes can be reversed.
- Sorts the message: new enquiry, existing customer, supplier, invoice, complaint, or noise.
- Assigns it to the person or team who handles that kind of thing, with a one-line summary.
- Pulls out the name, company, dates, quantities and anything else your CRM needs, and fills the record in.
- Drafts a first reply in your house style. A person reads it, edits it if needed, and presses send.
- Notices when a quote has gone quiet and drafts a polite chase for the owner to approve.
- Flags anything it isn't sure about for a person to sort by hand.
The email is cleaned before the AI reads it
Real emails are messy. A two-line enquiry arrives under a signature block with four logos, a legal disclaimer and the last eleven replies quoted underneath.
So we strip signatures, inline images and quoted chains first, and pass the model plain text. That makes it cheaper to run and far less likely to misread an old reply as the new question. Attachments are handled separately, and only when the workflow needs them.
Inbox rules are often enough
Outlook and Gmail rules, or the assignment rules in a shared inbox tool, handle a lot without any AI.
When AI triage is worth building
- Enquiries arrive in free text and the sender rarely uses the subject line you'd want.
- Someone spends the first part of each morning reading and forwarding.
- The details have to be retyped into a CRM or job system before work can start.
- Quotes go out and nobody notices which ones never got a reply.
Set up rules and a form
If most enquiries come through a web form, or senders and subjects are predictable, rules in Microsoft 365, Gmail or Missive will route them reliably for nothing. We'll say so and help you set them up.
How we build it
Count the inbox
The Workflow Audit counts where staff time goes, including how long the inbox takes and which kinds of email eat it.
Read a sample
We go through a batch of your real emails with you and agree the categories, the routing and what a good reply looks like.
Build in shadow
The triage runs alongside your team without acting. We compare its choices with theirs and fix the gaps.
Switch on, one step at a time
Routing goes live first. Drafts and CRM updates follow once the team trusts them. Each phase is a fixed price.
Questions about AI email triage
Will the AI send emails to our customers on its own?
No. A person approves anything sent to a customer. The AI drafts the reply and puts it in front of the right person, who edits and sends it. Internal steps, such as routing and CRM updates, can run on their own and are logged.
Does it work with Outlook, Gmail or Missive?
Yes. We connect to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace mailboxes, and to shared inbox tools such as Missive, through their own APIs. Your team keeps working in the inbox they already use.
Where do our emails go when the AI reads them?
It depends on how you want it run. The model can run privately inside your own cloud account, so the email text stays within it. Either way, we only send the cleaned text the task needs, and nothing is used to train a public model. See [secure AI platforms](/services/secure-ai-platform).
What happens when it gets one wrong?
Someone moves it, and the correction is logged. Every automated action can be reversed, and we review the corrections to tighten the rules and prompts. Emails it isn't sure about go to a person in the first place.
Can it update our CRM?
Yes, if the CRM has an API. It creates or updates the contact and enquiry with the details it found, and links the email. If your CRM can't take it, a [bespoke CRM](/bespoke-systems/crm) may be part of the answer.
Tell us what lands in the inbox
On a free call, describe the shared inbox and who answers it. If rules or a better form would fix it, we'll tell you that before anything else.