A complete guide to Freshdesk scenarios automation

If you work in customer support, you know the drill. So much of your day is spent on the small stuff: tagging tickets, assigning them to the right person, changing a status, repeat. Each click only takes a second, but they add up, pulling you away from the tricky customer problems that actually require your brainpower.

It’s the kind of busywork that can make a day feel twice as long.

Freshdesk scenarios automation is Freshdesk's built-in answer to this problem. It’s a feature designed to bundle a bunch of those clicks into a single action. Think of it as a handy shortcut to chip away at some of that manual work.

In this guide, we'll get into what Freshdesk Scenarios are, how to get them set up, and where they can genuinely make your life easier. But we're also going to be real about where they hit a wall. While simple, rule-based macros are a decent starting point, the game has changed. Modern support teams are now using AI to build workflows that don't just blindly follow rules, but can actually think for themselves.

What is Freshdesk scenarios automation?

Put simply, Freshdesk scenarios automation is a macro tool. It lets an agent run a pre-set list of actions on a ticket with just one click. It’s basically a one-click checklist for your most common ticket-handling routines.

The whole point is to standardize how your team handles certain recurring tickets (like refund requests or bug reports) and cut down on the time it takes to process them. So, instead of an agent needing to remember to manually tag a ticket, reassign it to the finance team, and change its status to "pending," they can just click a button, and the scenario does all three things at once.

It’s important to be clear about what this is: a purely rule-based system. It does the exact same thing, in the exact same order, every single time an agent clicks the button. It doesn't read the ticket to understand what the customer is actually saying, it can't pick up on their tone, and it certainly can't adapt if a situation is a little different from the norm. It's a blunt instrument, but a useful one in the right situations.

You can create these scenarios just for your own use, share them with a specific group of agents (like the Tier 1 team), or make them available to everyone. This gives you a bit of control over who can use which shortcuts, which helps keep things organized.

How to set up Freshdesk scenarios automation

The good news is that getting a new scenario up and running in Freshdesk is pretty straightforward. You don't need to be a developer; you just need to know which steps you want to automate.

A view of the no-code builder for creating a new scenario in Freshdesk scenarios automation.

Here’s a quick walkthrough to create one. Let's pretend we're making a scenario to escalate a ticket from a VIP customer.

1. First, head over to Admin > Agent Productivity > Scenario Automations in your Freshdesk account. You'll need admin permissions to get in here.

2. Look for the New Scenario button and give it a click.

3. Give your scenario a name that makes sense to everyone. Something like "Escalate VIP Ticket to Tier 2" is perfect because anyone on the team will know exactly what it does just by reading the name. Vague names like "Scenario 1" will just cause confusion down the line.

4. Now for the fun part. Under the Actions section, you'll start adding the steps for your macro. For our VIP escalation example, it might look like this:

   • First, you'd select "Set Priority as" from the dropdown menu and choose "Urgent." This makes sure it gets seen right away.

   • Next, click "Add new action." This time, select "Assign to group" and pick your "Tier 2 Support" group from the list.

   • Let's add one more. Click "Add new action" again, select "Add Tag," and type in "VIP_Escalation." This helps with tracking and reporting later.

5. Finally, you get to decide who can use this shiny new scenario. You can keep it for yourself, share it only with agents in your group, or make it available to all agents. For something like an escalation, you'd probably want all your front-line agents to have access.

6. Click Save, and that's it! Your scenario is live.

Agents can now find and run this scenario from the "More actions" menu when they're looking at a single ticket. They can even apply it to a whole batch of tickets at once from the main ticket list page, which is a huge time-saver.

A few of the most common actions you can string together in a scenario include setting priority or status, adding notes, applying tags, assigning to an agent or group, and even sending out templated emails.

Common use cases and limitations

Scenarios are genuinely helpful for those simple, repetitive tasks that don't need any deep thinking. They add a layer of consistency and a nice little speed boost to your team's day-to-day work.

Common use cases

Here are a few real-world examples of where Scenarios are a great fit:

• Processing Refunds: An agent identifies a refund request. One click on the "Process Refund" scenario can tag the ticket as "Refund," instantly assign it to the finance team's queue, and change the status to "Processing Refund" so everyone knows what's happening.

• Handling Bug Reports: A customer reports a glitch. The agent triggers a "Bug Report" scenario. This tags the ticket appropriately, sends it over to the engineering queue, and even adds a standard private note asking the engineering team to verify the reproduction steps.

• Onboarding New Customers: When a "welcome" ticket comes in, a scenario can fire off a pre-written welcome email with helpful links, assign the ticket to an onboarding specialist, and set a task for them to follow up in two days.

• Managing Spam: We all get spam. Instead of multiple clicks to mark and delete, a one-click scenario can mark the ticket as spam and delete it immediately, helping to keep your queue clean.

Where Freshdesk scenarios automation falls short

While scenarios are nice for the basics, their static, rule-based nature creates some serious roadblocks for teams that want to build smarter, more efficient automations.

• It’s not actually intelligent: Scenarios can't read. They have no idea what a customer's message is about. An agent still has to do the most time-consuming part: read the ticket, figure out what the customer wants, and then decide which scenario (if any) is the right one to run. This manual first step is a bottleneck and a prime spot for human error.

• The actions are limited: The list of available actions is stuck inside Freshdesk's ecosystem. You can't use a scenario to look up an order status in Shopify, check an account detail in your internal database, or trigger a custom API call. This is a huge blocker for actually resolving an issue in one go. You're just moving it around.

• They need constant babysitting: Your business changes, right? Products get updated, policies evolve, and processes get refined. Every time that happens, someone has to go in and manually update all the relevant scenarios. The system doesn't learn from past tickets or spot new patterns on its own. It's a manual upkeep chore.

This is exactly the ceiling you hit with rule-based tools. When you want to automate the thinking part, not just the clicking part, you need something more. Tools like eesel AI are built for this. Instead of waiting for an agent to trigger a macro, eesel’s AI Agent integrates with Freshdesk to automatically figure out what a ticket is about, draft a complete answer by pulling information from all your scattered knowledge sources, and even perform actions in other apps. It learns from every ticket you resolve, so it gets smarter over time without you having to constantly tweak it.

An example of eesel AI's Copilot drafting a reply for a refund policy question within Freshdesk, showcasing an intelligent alternative to static Freshdesk scenarios automation.

Pricing for automation features

Scenario Automations are available on all paid Freshdesk plans, which is great. However, if you want to tap into their more advanced, built-in AI features, you’ll need to open your wallet.

Here’s a quick look at the annual pricing for plans that include these features:

Feature / Plan	Growth	Pro	Enterprise
Price per agent/month	$15	$49	$79
Scenario Automations	Yes	Yes	Yes
Freddy AI Agent (Email Bots)	No	500 sessions included, then $100/1k sessions	500 sessions included, then $100/1k sessions
Freddy AI Copilot (Agent Assist)	No	$29/agent/month Add-on	$29/agent/month Add-on

As you can see, the basic macros are standard, but getting into Freshdesk's native AI (called Freddy AI) means a pretty big investment, often as a separate add-on that you have to pay for per agent. This pricing can get complicated and expensive fast, especially as your team grows.

For comparison, eesel AI's pricing is based on your overall usage, not the number of agents on your team. All the core tools, like the AI Agent, Copilot, and Triage, are baked into every plan. This gives you a single, predictable cost that doesn't punish you for adding more people to your team or successfully helping more customers.

The next step: AI-powered automation for Freshdesk

Freshdesk scenarios automation is a solid first step away from doing everything by hand. It’s a good way to dip your toes into the world of automation. But real, impactful efficiency comes when you let AI handle the initial heavy lifting of analysis and decision-making.

This is where a tool like eesel AI comes into the picture. It works as a smart layer on top of your existing Freshdesk setup. That means you get all the power of cutting-edge AI without having to go through the headache of switching to a whole new helpdesk.

How eesel AI enhances your Freshdesk workflow

Instead of just running a simple macro, eesel AI changes the entire flow of work from the moment a ticket arrives.

• Go beyond macros with intelligent responses: eesel AI doesn't just change a ticket's status. It reads the ticket, figures out the customer's actual problem, and then consults your entire knowledge base, whether it's in Confluence, Google Docs, or past tickets, to draft a complete, accurate, and on-brand response.

• Simulate with confidence before you launch: One of the scariest parts of AI is the fear that it might go off the rails and start sending weird replies to customers. eesel AI has a powerful simulation mode that lets you test your AI agent on thousands of your real, historical Freshdesk tickets in a completely safe space. You can see exactly how it would have replied and get a data-backed forecast of your automation rate before it ever touches a live customer interaction.

• Take action in any system: eesel AI isn't trapped inside Freshdesk. Using custom actions, it can be set up to look up order details in Shopify, check a subscription status in Stripe, or create a new issue in Jira. This means it can actually resolve issues from end to end, not just update a few fields and pass the ticket along.

The difference becomes pretty clear. A scenario workflow still needs an agent to do all the upfront thinking. An AI-driven workflow lets the technology handle that initial lift, freeing up your team to focus on the conversations and problems that matter most.

Final thoughts on Freshdesk scenarios automation

So, what's the verdict? Freshdesk scenarios automation is a valuable feature for any team looking to automate simple, predictable workflows inside their helpdesk. It's a fantastic way to save a few clicks on the tasks you find yourself doing over and over again every single day.

But it’s important to remember what it is: a static, rule-based tool that still counts on a human agent to do the hard work of understanding a ticket's context. It can't learn, it can't adapt, and it can't connect with your other business tools to resolve issues completely.

For teams that are ready to move beyond basic macros, bringing in an AI platform like eesel AI is a powerful and surprisingly low-risk way to automate entire resolutions, give your agents superpowers, and scale your support, all without having to ditch the tools you already use.

Curious how eesel AI can work with your Freshdesk setup? You can get it live in minutes, not months. Start your free trial.