AI Email Triage: How to Cut Support Workload by 80%

AI email triage reads every incoming message, understands intent and urgency, and routes it to the right owner in seconds. Done well, it cuts manual sorting by up to 80% and keeps SLAs green even during spikes.

Why AI triage now

Volume spikes: launches and outages create instant backlogs.
SLA risk: manual queues push urgent cases behind routine questions.
Cost pressure: adding headcount for sorting doesn’t scale.

What great AI triage does

Understands intent: billing, refunds, access issues, product bugs, sales.
Assigns priority: sentiment + account value + SLA commitments.
Creates tickets: every email becomes trackable work with owner and due time.
Routes automatically: to the right queue, owner, or escalation lane.
Surfaces risk: VIP domains, outage keywords, negative sentiment.

Deployment blueprint (1 week)

Map categories: top 8–10 intents with clear definitions.
Set priority rules: sentiment score, VIP domains, SLA tier, outage phrases.
Connect inboxes: Gmail/Outlook/shared inboxes into one triage lane.
Shadow mode: run AI suggestions for 1–2 days; review 50+ samples.
Go live on low-risk: auto-route refunds, billing, general questions.
Add alerts: P1 no-owner for 30 mins, P2 no-reply for 4 hours.
QA loop: daily spot-check 10–20 tickets, correct categories, tighten rules.

What to automate vs keep human

Automate: categorisation, priority tagging, ticket creation, routing, SLA flags.
Keep human: empathy, negotiations, edge-case billing, complex troubleshooting.

Guardrails to protect quality

Ownership in minutes: every email gets an owner fast.
Visibility: dashboards for new, in progress, waiting on customer, resolved.
Escalation rules: negative sentiment + VIP domain auto-promotes to P1.
Audit trail: every AI decision logged; agents can correct with one click.

Metrics to track (MOFU)

Internal clicks: how often readers move to demo or BOFU pages.
Demo views: visits to the demo page from this article.
Ops signals: % auto-routed, SLA attainment, median first-response time.

Expected results

Manual sorting reduced by 60–80%.
Median FRT down 40–70% during peaks.
SLA breaches reduced to <3% for P1/P2.

Implementation checklist

Shared inbox connected and centralised.
AI classifier live for categories, priority, sentiment.
Tickets auto-created with owners and due times.
Alerts for unassigned/overdue P1 and P2.
Macros for common replies; personalise first lines.

Ready to see it?

Watch how InboxIQ triages real emails and keeps SLAs green.

View demo Compare: Cost of Slow Support

Next steps: see the demo, then compare how InboxIQ handles SLAs vs. manual triage.