Save time with pre-saved replies

Often customers tend to keep coming back with repetitive and similar queries. Answering the same questions repeatedly will be tedious and time-consuming for your support team. This is where Canned Responses will be useful.

By pre-saving replies to common queries as Canned Responses, you can speed up your response time while keeping your replies personalized.

Use Canned Responses in a conversation

You can easily send a canned response in a conversation by typing “/”(forward slash) followed by the shortcode. When you create canned responses, you will add a shortcode to each canned response that you create. Make sure the shortcode you add is relevant and easy to remember.

You can also add a canned response to your reply by selecting the canned response icon below the reply text box. From here, you can search for your saved replies and also preview them before adding them to a conversation.

Pro-tip: Whenever you use a canned response in a conversation, it's a good idea to add a personal note at the beginning or end of the saved reply to connect with your customers.

Create a Canned Response

It is easy to create a Canned Response in Freshchat. If your role is Admin/Account Owner, you can create canned replies for yourself and your agents. 

Go to Settings > Canned Responses > Create canned response

Give a title to your canned response. It can be a question that a customer asks. For example, "How to change a password." Type your reply. You can also include emojis or images in your response. Add a shortcode that you’ll remember to access the canned response later. In our example, the shortcode can be ‘pswd’ or ‘password.’

Next, select a folder under the personal or shared category. Saved replies in your personal folder will be visible only to you, while those in the shared folders will also be available to your agents.

You can delete a canned response at any time.

You can also move canned responses between folders and across categories.

How to use Placeholders with Canned Responses

Go to Settings > Canned Responses > Create canned response.

Click { }. You’ll be able to see the list of properties you can use as a placeholder.

For example, a welcome message could look something like this,

Hi {{user.firstName}} ,

My name is {{agent.firstName}}. How can I help you today?

Here {{user.firstName}} is a user property that inserts the user’s first name and {{agent.firstName}} will be replaced with the corresponding agent’s first name in the conversation.

You can also add an alternate text for the placeholder in the popup that appears. In case the user property is not available, the placeholder will be replaced with the alternate text you add.

For example, the alt text for {{user.FirstName}} can be ‘there’ so that the message becomes,

Hi there,

My name is Joan. How can I help you today?

Now when you use this Canned Response in a conversation, the user property and the agent property will be replaced with the respective values, in this case, the user’s first name and the agent’s first name.

Note: Custom user properties are also supported as placeholders.

Create Categories

You can create multiple personal and shared categories. Just click the + sign next to the Create Category. Give a name and select the agents with whom you want to share this folder. You can share the new folder with all your agents or specific teams. 

You can also edit/delete a folder anytime by selecting the folder and going to the 'Manage' option next to the folder name.