✉️ Automated Email Sorting & Drafting for Customer Support - with AI 🤖

Description

🤖 Automated Email Sorting & FAQ Reply Assistant (n8n + Gemini AI)

🔍 Overview

This n8n workflow automates email triage and FAQ responses using Google Sheets and Gemini AI. It’s designed to:

Automatically sort incoming emails into categories (e.g., FAQ, Billing, Tech Support).
Draft polite, relevant replies* for FAQ emails using *AI**, grounded in your pre-approved content.
Maintain a human-in-the-loop process by saving responses as Gmail drafts for manual review.

Perfect for startups or teams seeking to reduce support workload while ensuring consistent, helpful responses.

⚙️ Pre-conditions / Requirements

Before using this workflow, make sure you have:

✅ A Google account with access to:
Gmail (with custom labels like FAQ-Waiting, FAQ-Draft)
Google Sheets (used as your FAQ source)
✅ A Gemini API key (to generate AI replies)
✅ A dedicated Gmail label to collect emails needing draft replies (e.g., FAQ-Waiting)
✅ A dedicated Gmail label to store drafted replies for manual sending (e.g., FAQ-Draft)
✅ A Google Sheet with two columns:
Question — common user inquiries
Answer — the matching, approved reply text

🧠 How It Works

Trigger
Scheduled workflow run (e.g., every 15 minutes)

Fetch Emails
Grabs Gmail messages under a specific label like FAQ-Waiting

Process & Clean
Loops through each email
Cleans content (removes signatures/HTML)
Sends it to Gemini AI

AI Reply Drafting
AI matches email intent against your FAQ from Google Sheets
Generates a friendly, accurate draft reply, grounded only in your predefined Q&A

Update Gmail
Removes FAQ-Waiting label
Adds FAQ-Draft label
Saves draft reply in Gmail for manual review and sending

Fallback Routing
If email doesn’t match FAQ criteria, it follows a FALSE path
You can implement further logic here (e.g., route to Billing, escalate to a human agent, log as feedback)

🛠️ Setup Instructions

Connect Gmail + Google Sheets + Gemini AI
Set up credentials in n8n for Gmail, Google Sheets, and Gemini AI

Prepare Labels in Gmail
Create: FAQ-Waiting (input folder), FAQ-Draft (drafts ready to send)
Optionally, create other labels (e.g., Billing, Tech Support)

Build your FAQ Sheet
Create a new Google Sheet with:
Column A: Question
Column B: Answer
Add rows with typical user questions and the matching replies

Configure AI Agent
In the AI agent node, edit the prompt to fit your tone of voice (friendly, professional, concise, etc.)
Ensure the AI is instructed to only use answers from the sheet, and not hallucinate

Adjust Schedule
Modify the trigger interval to match your needs (e.g., every X minutes)

🧩 Customization Tips

Custom Prompts**: Tailor the Gemini AI prompt in the node to change tone, length, or structure of replies
Add New Categories**: Use the FALSE path in the IF node to handle non-FAQ emails (e.g., route to Billing, escalate to human agent, log feedback)
Multiple Sheets**: You can expand the system by using different sheets for different topics
Tone Matching**: Adjust AI output by providing sample reply templates or tone instructions directly in the AI node

✅ Use Cases

SaaS startups triaging customer support
Solo founders who want consistent replies with minimal effort
Teams managing growing inbox volumes while maintaining quality support