Support Desk: Ticket Triage & Response Automation

Automate support ticket categorization, routing, and first-response drafting

Outcomes

  • Reduce first-response time from hours to under 10 minutes
  • Eliminate manual ticket categorization and routing
  • Draft accurate first responses for 70%+ of common support requests
  • Give support leads a real-time view of ticket volume, category, and resolution time

Before & After

Before

  • Support emails sit in a shared inbox until someone reads, categorizes, and assigns them manually
  • Common questions get answered differently depending on who responds and how busy they are
  • No visibility into ticket volume, response times, or category trends until someone builds a report

After

  • Incoming tickets are categorized, prioritized, and routed to the right person within minutes
  • Consistent first-response drafts based on your knowledge base, reviewed before sending
  • Live dashboard tracks open tickets, average response time, and top categories

Workflow Map

Trigger New email received in support inbox or new HubSpot ticket created
step Parse and categorize Read the incoming message, extract key details (product, issue type, urgency), and assign a category
step Check knowledge base Search existing documentation, past responses, and FAQ entries for relevant answers
step Draft first response Generate a response draft using matched knowledge base content, tailored to the specific request
Approval Agent review Slack notification to the assigned support agent with the draft response for review and edit before sending
step Send response Dispatch the approved response via Gmail and update the ticket status in HubSpot
step Update tracking sheet Log the ticket details, category, response time, and resolution status in Google Sheets
Output Weekly support summary Post a weekly summary of ticket volume, top categories, average response time, and open items to the team Slack channel

Integrations

HubSpot
Gmail
Slack
Google Sheets

Exceptions Handled

  • Message is not a support request (vendor pitch, spam, internal FYI): filtered out and tagged for review rather than processed as a ticket
  • No knowledge base match found: routes to a senior agent with the raw message and a note that no draft was generated
  • Customer reply to an existing thread: links to the original ticket instead of creating a duplicate
  • High-urgency keyword detected (outage, billing error, security): escalates immediately to the support lead via Slack DM
  • Attachment contains sensitive data (credit card, SSN patterns): flags for manual handling and does not include in the draft response

7-Day Implementation Timeline

Day 1

Audit existing support workflow; inventory common ticket types, response templates, and knowledge sources

Day 2

Connect HubSpot and Gmail; configure ticket categorization rules based on historical patterns

Day 3

Index knowledge base content: existing docs, FAQ pages, past successful responses

Day 4

Build the response drafting logic and configure the Slack review flow

Day 5

Set up the tracking dashboard in Google Sheets and weekly summary publishing

Day 6

Parallel run: drafts generated but not sent; agents compare automated drafts to what they would have written

Day 7

Go live; first automated draft-and-review cycle runs on real tickets

Pricing Hint

Support workflows typically fall within the Grow plan. High-volume teams (50+ tickets/week) may need Scale.

View pricing plans →

Frequently Asked Questions

No. Every draft response goes to your support agent for review in Slack before sending. The agent can edit, approve, or rewrite the response. Nothing goes to a customer without a human yes.

When an agent significantly edits a draft before sending, the updated response is flagged as a potential knowledge base addition. Your managed plan includes monthly knowledge base reviews.

The workflow processes any ticket that lands in HubSpot, regardless of source channel. If you use HubSpot forms, chat, or email forwarding, they all get triaged through the same workflow.

The workflow tracks conversation threads. Follow-up messages are linked to the original ticket, and the agent gets full context in the Slack notification. The workflow handles the first response and routing; your team handles the conversation.

How It Works

When a support request arrives in your inbox or HubSpot, the workflow reads it, extracts the key details, and categorizes it by type and urgency. It then searches your existing knowledge base (documentation, past responses, FAQ entries) for relevant content and drafts a first response tailored to the specific request. Your support agent gets a Slack notification with the draft, the original message, and the matched knowledge base content. They review, edit if needed, and approve with one click. The response goes out via Gmail, the ticket updates in HubSpot, and the tracking dashboard captures the data.

Why It Matters

Most small support teams lose time on the wrong things. They are reading every email to figure out what it is, deciding who should handle it, and writing the same answers to the same questions with slight variations. The actual problem-solving (the part that requires human judgment) is a fraction of the total time spent. Automated triage and first-response drafting give your team back the hours spent on categorization and repetitive answers so they can focus on the tickets that genuinely need a person.

What You Get on Day Seven

By the end of implementation week, incoming tickets are automatically categorized, routed, and drafted. The parallel run on Day 6 lets your agents compare automated drafts against their own responses to calibrate quality before going live. From that point forward, your team reviews and sends instead of writing from scratch, and your weekly summary gives you real-time visibility into what your support team handles and how fast they handle it.

Ready to automate this workflow?

Book a 15-minute fit call. We will walk through your setup, confirm the integrations, and map out your 7-day go-live plan.

Support Desk: Ticket Triage & Response Automation

Book a 15-min Fit Call