How to use Freshdesk AI to extract a product SKU and write to a custom field

If you're running a support team for an e-commerce business using Freshdesk, you've seen it a thousand times. A customer emails about an order, and your agent’s first job is to hunt down the product SKU, copy it, click over to the right ticket field, and paste it in. It seems like a tiny task, but when you multiply it by hundreds of tickets a day, it adds up to a ton of wasted time and opens the door for simple mistakes.

What if an AI could just… do that for you? Instantly and without errors. This guide will show you exactly how to set up a simple workflow that automatically finds a product SKU in a customer’s message and puts it into a custom field in Freshdesk. There’s no code involved and no complicated setup, just a straightforward fix you can get running in a few minutes.

What you'll need to get started

Before we jump in, let’s make sure you have everything ready. This whole process is pretty simple and doesn’t require a developer, but you will need admin access to a couple of things.

• A Freshdesk account: You’ll need to be an admin so you can create custom ticket fields.

• A product database: This could be your e-commerce platform like Shopify or even just a Google Sheet where you keep all your SKU information.

• An eesel AI account: You can get started with one in just a couple of minutes. eesel AI is the tool that will connect to Freshdesk and handle the automation for you.

A step-by-step guide

We’ll walk through this in a few easy steps, starting with setting up the field in Freshdesk and ending with deploying the AI with total confidence.

Step 1: Create a custom field in Freshdesk

First thing's first: you need a place for the AI to drop the SKU. Let’s make a custom field for it in Freshdesk.

1. Log into your Freshdesk account as an administrator.

2. Head over to Admin > Workflows > Ticket Fields.

3. Find the "Single-line text" field on the right panel and drag it into your ticket form.

4. Give it a clear label, something like "Product SKU" or "Extracted SKU".

5. Click Save.

And that’s it. You now have a dedicated spot in every ticket for the SKU. Easy.

A screenshot of the Freshdesk ticket dashboard, where you can manage and create custom fields.

Step 2: Connect eesel AI to Freshdesk in minutes

Next, let's get the AI connected. One of the biggest headaches with new tools is the setup. You often have to book a sales call, sit through a demo, and then wait for someone to get you started. With eesel AI, you can connect to your help desk with a single click, meaning you can be up and running in minutes, not months.

1. Sign up for an eesel AI account.

2. From your dashboard, go to the Sources section and click "Add Source."

3. Choose Freshdesk from the list of integrations.

4. Just follow the on-screen instructions to authorize the connection. eesel AI will link up securely with your Freshdesk account without you having to mess around with any complicated API keys or asking a developer for help.

Step 3: Teach the AI about your products

For an AI to find your SKUs, it needs to know what they are. Instead of making you build a brand new knowledge base from the ground up, eesel AI can learn directly from the sources you already have, including your old tickets.

• Connect your knowledge: In the eesel AI dashboard, you can connect sources like your public help center, internal docs in Confluence or Google Docs, and even your Shopify product list.

• Train on past tickets: If you’re on the Business plan, you can let the AI train on your historical tickets. This is a huge advantage because the AI learns how your team has handled similar problems before, picks up on your brand voice, and understands the different ways customers talk about your products.

Step 4: Build the workflow

Alright, this is where it all comes together. We're going to create an AI Action in eesel AI to handle this task for us. This is more than just generating answers; it's about building a workflow that does things for you.

1. In your eesel AI dashboard, go to the AI Agent section and choose your Freshdesk bot.

2. Click on the Prompt & Actions tab. This is where you tell the AI what to do.

3. You'll see a prompt editor where you can guide the AI's behavior, but for this, we want to focus on actions.

4. Click "Add Action" and select the Update Ticket action for Freshdesk.

5. A list of fields you can update will appear. Find the "Product SKU" custom field you made back in Step 1.

6. For the value, you’ll give the AI a simple instruction. Tell it something like: "Read the customer's message and find the product SKU. If you find one, put it here. If you don't, leave this field blank."

7. Save the action.

Now, whenever a new ticket arrives, the AI will read it, grab the SKU, and fill in that custom field for you.

An example of the eesel AI copilot drafting a reply within the Freshdesk interface, showcasing how this automation can be part of a larger workflow.

Pro tip: Go beyond extraction

Step 5: Test and activate the workflow

How do you make sure this works without messing up a live customer conversation? Most tools force you to test in a live environment, which is always a bit nerve-wracking. eesel AI gives you a simulation mode to avoid that stress.

• Go to the Simulation tab in your AI Agent settings.

• Pick a date range of past tickets you want to test your new workflow on.

• eesel AI will then run your AI over thousands of your old tickets in a safe, sandboxed environment. It will show you exactly how it would have performed, which tickets it would have updated, what SKUs it found, and its overall accuracy rate.

• Once you’re happy with how it's working, you can activate the AI Agent. You can even choose to roll it out slowly by having it handle only certain types of tickets at first.

This risk-free testing lets you feel good about the setup before the AI ever touches a live ticket.

Tips for success

Getting this workflow set up is pretty straightforward, but here are a few pointers to make sure it runs perfectly.

• Start simple. My advice is to begin by just setting up the Freshdesk AI to extract a product SKU and write to a custom field. Once you see that it's working well, you can start adding more complex steps, like looking up order statuses.

• Refine your prompt. Your customers might call an SKU an "item number," "product ID," or "model #." You can tweak the instructions in the eesel AI prompt editor to help the AI recognize all these different terms.

• Keep an eye on performance. Check the eesel AI reporting dashboard to see how the automation is doing. The reports can also point out gaps in your knowledge base by showing you what questions are coming up that you don't have articles for yet.

And here are a couple of common slip-ups to watch out for:

• Forgetting the custom field. The AI needs a target for the data it finds. Make sure you’ve set up your custom field in Freshdesk before you build the action in eesel AI.

• Giving the AI too much information. When you connect your knowledge sources, be thoughtful. If you only want the AI to handle product questions, only give it access to your product catalog and related help docs. Limiting its knowledge scope helps keep its accuracy high.

Automate your Freshdesk workflows

So there you have it. You've just built a smart automation that solves a real, everyday headache for support teams. No more agents wasting time on every single ticket with manual copy-pasting. Now, you have an AI that does it for them in an instant.

This is just one example of what you can do. While native tools like Freshdesk's Freddy AI offer some automation features, they often have session-based pricing that can add up quickly and can be tricky to configure for workflows with multiple steps. And while tools like Zapier are great for connecting apps, they don't have the intelligence to learn from your past tickets and often require you to string together multiple "Zaps" to get one process done.

A view of Freshdesk's native Freddy AI, which can be enhanced by using a third-party tool for this automation.

With a platform like eesel AI, you get a much simpler, self-serve experience that plugs right into your help desk. You can go live in minutes with one-click integrations, keep full control with a customizable workflow engine, and unify all your company knowledge in one place. Best of all, you can test everything in a safe simulation mode before you turn it on.

If you’re ready to free up your team from those small, repetitive tasks so they can focus on what they do best, helping customers, it’s time to put AI to work.

Ready to stop looking up SKUs by hand? Try eesel AI for free and see how quickly you can automate your Freshdesk workflows.