Manage customer inquiries from email & web forms with Slack & Google Sheets

This n8n workflow is designed to centralize the management and tracking of customer inquiries received through multiple channels (email and web forms).

Who's it for?

• Customer support teams
• Marketing teams
• Sales teams
• Small to medium-sized businesses
• Individuals looking to streamline customer inquiry processes

How it works / What it does

This workflow is designed to automatically collect, process, route, and track customer inquiries from different sources.

1. Multi-Channel Input: The workflow listens for inquiries from both incoming emails and web form submissions.

   • Email Trigger: Monitors a specific inbox for sent emails.
   • Webhook - Web Form: Listens for web form data submitted to a designated endpoint.

2. Data Extraction and Parsing:

   • Extract Email Content: Extracts HTML content from incoming emails to get a clean text message.
   • Parse Email Data: Extracts relevant information from the email, such as customer name, email address, subject, message, received timestamp, source ("email"), and inquiry type (e.g., "urgent", "billing", "general") based on the subject line.
   • Parse Webhook Data: Extracts customer name, email, subject, message, received timestamp, source ("webform"), and inquiry type from the web form data based on the provided type or a default of "general".

3. Merge Inquiries: The parsed email and web form inquiry data are combined into a single stream for continued processing.

4. Route by Inquiry Type: The workflow then routes the inquiries based on the extracted inquiryType.

   • Urgent Inquiries: Inquiries marked as "urgent" are routed to a specific Slack channel for immediate alerts.
   • General Inquiries: Inquiries marked as "general" are notified in another Slack channel.
   • Billing Inquiries: Inquiries marked as "billing" are routed to the general inquiries channel, or can be customized for a separate channel if needed.

5. Save to Google Sheets: All inquiry data is logged into a Google Sheet, which serves as a central repository, including details like customer name, email, subject, message, source, received timestamp, and inquiry type.

6. Send Auto-Reply Email: Customers receive an automated email reply confirming that their inquiry has been successfully received.

How to set up

1. Google Sheets:

   • Create a new spreadsheet in your Google Drive.
   • Name the first sheet "Inquiries" and create the following header row: customerName, customerEmail, subject, message, source, receivedAt, inquiryType.
   • In the 'Save to Google Sheets' node, configure the Spreadsheet ID and Sheet Name. Link your Google Sheets credentials.

2. Email Trigger (IMAP):

   • Set up the 'Email Trigger' node to connect to your IMAP email account. Test it to ensure it correctly listens for incoming emails before activating the workflow.

3. Webhook - Web Form:

   • Copy the Webhook URL from the 'Webhook - Web Form' node and configure your web form to submit data to it. Ensure your web form sends fields like name, email, subject, message, and type in JSON format.

4. Slack:

   • Configure your Slack credentials to connect to your Slack workspace.
   • Update the relevant Slack Channel IDs in both the 'Notify Urgent - Slack' and 'Notify General - Slack' nodes for sending notifications for urgent and general inquiries.

5. Gmail:

   • Set up your Gmail credentials to connect to your Gmail account.
   • Ensure the 'Send Auto-Reply Email' node is correctly linked to your sending Gmail account.

Requirements

• An n8n instance
• A Google Sheets account
• An IMAP-enabled email account
• A Slack workspace
• A Gmail account
• A basic web form (to integrate with the Webhook node)

How to customize the workflow

• Add more Inquiry Types: You can add more specific inquiry types (e.g., "technical support", "returns") by adding more rules in the 'Route by Inquiry Type' node.
• Additional Notification Channels: To integrate other notification systems (e.g., Microsoft Teams, Discord, SMS) beyond Slack, create new routing outputs and add new notification nodes for the desired service.
• CRM Integration: Instead of or in addition to saving data to Google Sheets, you can add new nodes to connect to CRM systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, or others.
• Prioritization and Escalation: Implement more complex logic to trigger escalation processes or prioritization rules based on inquiry type or keywords.
• AI Sentiment Analysis: Integrate an AI node to analyze the sentiment of inquiry messages and route or prioritize them accordingly.

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