✉️ Automated email sorting & drafting for customer support - with AI 🤖

🤖 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

1. Trigger

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

2. Fetch Emails

   • Grabs Gmail messages under a specific label like FAQ-Waiting

3. Process & Clean

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

4. 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

5. Update Gmail

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

6. 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

1. Connect Gmail + Google Sheets + Gemini AI

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

2. Prepare Labels in Gmail

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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