Freddy AI thank you detector: Why it fails and what to use instead

We’ve all been there. A support agent finally resolves a tough ticket, takes a deep breath, and then watches it pop right back into the queue. The culprit? The customer replied with a simple, "Thanks so much!"

It seems like a small thing, but it’s one of those little frustrations that drive support teams crazy. This common problem clutters up your support queues and throws important metrics like First Contact Resolution (FCR) completely out of whack. To solve this, help desks started rolling out AI-powered "thank you detectors," and one of the most well-known is the Freshdesk Freddy AI thank you detector.

In theory, it's a brilliant solution. In reality, it’s a bit more complicated. We're going to dig into how this feature actually performs, look at its well-documented limitations based on real user feedback, and introduce a more reliable, modern way to handle ticket automation that you can actually count on.

What is the Freddy AI thank you detector supposed to do?

According to Freshdesk's own documentation, the Freddy AI thank you detector is a tool built to figure out the intent behind a customer's reply to a closed or resolved ticket. Its main job is to tell the difference between a simple message of gratitude and a genuine follow-up question. This way, the ticket doesn't automatically reopen just because a customer was being polite.

It’s part of the wider Freddy AI suite and comes as an add-on called "Freddy Insights." The feature is meant to work across all languages Freshdesk supports and operates on a confidence model. This means it’s supposed to keep a ticket closed only when it's over 90% sure the reply is just a thank you. On paper, it sounds like the perfect tool to reduce noise and keep queues clean.

Freddy AI thank you detector: The promise vs. what actually happens

The idea behind the thank you detector is a no-brainer: cleaner queues, more accurate reports, and less busywork for your agents. It’s an easy thing to want. But when you look at how it performs out in the wild, a different story starts to unfold, one told by the very users it’s meant to help.

Limitations: Real user feedback

A quick scroll through the Freshworks community forums shows a long history of frustration with the feature. Users consistently report problems that range from minor annoyances to pretty big service failures.

Here are some of the most common complaints, pulled directly from people's experiences:

• Closing tickets that are still active. The detector often gets it wrong, flagging real customer questions as "thank yous" and leaving them unanswered. One user shared a story where a customer asking to "change their password" had their ticket automatically closed by the AI, which completely missed the actual request.

• Missing obvious "thank yous". On the other hand, it frequently fails to catch the simplest expressions of gratitude. Tickets get reopened for a one-word reply like "Thanks," which defeats the whole purpose of the tool.

• Struggling with context. The AI seems to have a hard time with nuance. It gets confused by replies that include "thank you" but also ask a new question. It’s also been known to misfire on unrelated phrases, profanity, and simple replies like "Yes please." One of the most telling examples was a user whose Italian-speaking customer wrote, "Chiudete il mio conto, grazie" (Close my account, thanks). The detector saw "grazie," flagged it as a thank you, and completely ignored the critical instruction to close their account.

• Performance getting worse over time. One particularly diligent user decided to actually track the detector's success rate. They found its accuracy dropped from 78% in the first month to 74% in the second, and down to 70% in the third. The system, which is supposed to be "learning," was actually getting worse.

The problems have become so common that some users have reported their own Technical Account Managers (TAMs) at Freshworks have told them to just turn the feature off.

A better approach: AI you can actually test

These kinds of mistakes are a classic sign that the detector is probably relying on basic keyword matching instead of truly understanding the conversation. It seems to be looking for specific words rather than grasping what the user is actually trying to say.

This is where a modern alternative like eesel AI does things completely differently. Instead of a narrow, single-purpose "detector," eesel AI uses a sophisticated AI engine trained on your entire history of support conversations. This helps it understand nuance, your brand's voice, and the real intent behind a customer's message.

More importantly, eesel AI comes with a powerful simulation mode. Before you ever turn an automation on, you can run it on thousands of your past tickets in a safe environment. This would immediately show you how the AI handles "thank you" replies and other tricky situations, letting you fine-tune its behavior without any risk. You can launch with confidence, avoiding the trial-and-error headaches so many Freshdesk users have been dealing with.

The hidden costs of a faulty detector

A faulty tool isn't just an inconvenience; it can be much worse than having no tool at all. It doesn't solve the original problem and instead creates a new set of issues that can hurt your support operations and customer relationships.

How a faulty detector messes with your support metrics

When an AI consistently gets it wrong, it directly hits your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), making it impossible to get an accurate read on your team's performance.

• First Contact Resolution (FCR): When a simple "thanks" reopens a ticket, it incorrectly counts as a failure to resolve the issue on the first try. This unfairly tanks your FCR rate and makes your team look less effective than they really are.

• Ticket Reopen Rate: This metric gets hugely inflated and basically becomes useless. It's supposed to help you spot recurring issues, but when it’s filled with false alarms, it just becomes noise.

• Resolution Time: This is where things can get really damaging. When a legitimate issue is missed because the AI marked it as a "thank you," the customer has to follow up, often angry and frustrated. This drastically increases the total resolution time and can seriously impact customer satisfaction. As one user in the forums said, "this means that my FCR/Ticket reopen stats aren’t reliable."

Why your agents stop trusting the automation

There's a human cost to this, too. Agents get tired of the boring, repetitive task of manually re-closing tickets that the AI should have caught.

But even more importantly, they lose faith in the automation itself. When that trust is gone, they start double-checking every single thing the AI does, which completely defeats the purpose of saving time. The tool that was meant to help becomes just another thing to manage.

This is why eesel AI’s approach is built around earning that trust. With our AI Triage product, you get fine-grained control over what gets automated. You can start by having the AI handle only the most straightforward ticket types, like password resets, and have it send everything else to a human. This lets your team build confidence in the system and grow your automation efforts at a comfortable pace.

Moving beyond the thank you detector with modern AI

The real issue here is that a simple "thank you detector" is a bandage on a much larger problem. To truly streamline your support, you need to think bigger.

True intent recognition is the real goal

Look, the goal isn't just to spot the phrase "thank you." It's to understand the intent behind every customer reply. Are they grateful? Asking a follow-up? Reporting a new bug? Or escalating an old problem?

A single-purpose detector is a bit of a relic from an older approach to AI. Modern support teams need a flexible, multi-purpose automation engine that can handle the full range of customer interactions.

How eesel AI offers a reliable alternative

The eesel AI Agent is a comprehensive solution that works seamlessly with Freshdesk, giving you a powerful alternative to the native Freddy AI tools.

eesel AI Agent automatically answering and resolving a ticket in Zendesk. Here’s what makes it a better choice than the Freddy AI thank you detector:

• It learns from everything. eesel AI doesn't just look at the last reply in a ticket. It learns from your entire knowledge ecosystem, including past tickets, your help center, and other sources like Confluence or Google Docs, to make smart decisions.

• You can customize the actions. It can do much more than just leave a ticket closed. You can set it up to send tickets to the right team, apply specific tags, look up order information from your Shopify store, or even run custom commands with your internal systems.

• You can set it up yourself. You can connect your Freshdesk account and build your first automation in a few minutes, all on your own. Unlike a lot of enterprise AI tools, you don't have to sit through mandatory sales calls or long onboarding sessions to get started.

Freddy AI thank you detector pricing

Freshdesk offers several pricing plans, including Free, Growth ($15/agent/month), Pro ($49/agent/month), and Enterprise ($79/agent/month) tiers when you pay annually.

However, the Freddy AI thank you detector isn't included in those base plans. It's part of the "Freddy AI" add-on, which means you have to buy separate licenses for your agents or purchase packs of "Freddy sessions." This add-on model can make your costs hard to predict, since they can change based on how much you use it.

This is a different approach from eesel AI's transparent pricing, which is based on a set number of AI interactions per month. There are no per-resolution fees, so your bill is predictable. You're not penalized for having a busy month, and you know exactly what you're paying for upfront.

Fix detector problems for good with eesel AI

While the idea of a Freddy AI thank you detector is a good one, the real-world evidence from its own users shows it's often unreliable and can create more problems than it solves.

The real fix isn't a slightly better detector; it’s a smarter, fully integrated AI platform that truly understands context, can be tested safely before you launch it, and gives you complete control over your support workflows. eesel AI provides a powerful, easy-to-use, and reliable alternative that works with the helpdesk you're already using.

Ready to automate your support with an AI you can actually trust? Connect your Freshdesk account and start simulating with eesel AI for free.