A practical guide to Freshdesk workflows to tag tickets by intent automatically

Let's be real: manually sorting and tagging every new ticket in Freshdesk is a grind. It's the kind of task that slows down your whole team, invites mistakes, and keeps your best agents stuck doing busywork instead of actually helping customers.

The obvious answer is automation. But there's a catch. You need more than just simple keyword-spotting; you need a system that gets what your customers actually mean.

This guide will walk you through setting up Freshdesk workflows to tag tickets by intent automatically. We’ll look at what you can do with Freshdesk's own tools, where they fall short, and how a smarter, AI-driven approach can get you set up in just a few minutes.

How automation rules work in Freshdesk

Before we get into the weeds of intent-based tagging, let's quickly cover how automation works in Freshdesk. It's all based on a simple 'if this, then that' logic. You set up rules that trigger actions when certain things happen. Freshdesk breaks these down into three main types:

1. Ticket Creation Rules: These kick in the second a new ticket lands in your inbox. They're great for initial sorting, like sending any ticket with "billing" in the subject line over to the finance team.

2. Ticket Update Rules: These are triggered whenever a ticket gets changed. For instance, you could use one to automatically ping a manager if a high-priority ticket gets a thumbs-down satisfaction rating.

3. Time-Based Rules (Hourly Triggers): These rules scan your tickets every hour and act on time-sensitive conditions. A common use is to automatically close out a ticket that’s been marked as resolved for more than 48 hours.

Typically, people use these workflows to tag tickets by searching for certain keywords. It's a decent start, but it often misses the mark when it comes to understanding how people actually talk.

Setting up native Freshdesk workflows for automatic ticket tagging

Inside Freshdesk, you have two main options for automating ticket tagging: the classic, rule-based method and the built-in AI, Freddy.

Rule-based automations: The old-school approach

The most direct way to do this is by creating a "Ticket Creation" automation rule. You can find these by heading to Admin > Workflows > Automations.

A common setup might look like this:

• Condition: If a ticket's subject or description "contains" the word "refund".

• Action: "Add tag" "Refund Request".

This works fine for obvious, high-frequency keywords. But the system is rigid. It’s going to completely miss a customer who says, "I'd like my money back" or "this charge isn't right." To catch all the variations, you'd have to build an unmanageable mountain of rules, and who has time for that?

Stepping it up with Freddy AI

To get around the problems with basic rules, Freshdesk introduced Freddy AI. Freddy tries to be a bit smarter by analyzing the ticket's content to suggest or autofill fields like priority or type. This is a step up, for sure, since it’s attempting to understand context instead of just matching words.

But Freddy has a blind spot. It's primarily trained on the data that lives right inside your Freshdesk account. It has no idea about the wealth of information sitting in your other tools, like Confluence, Google Docs, or your company's internal wiki.

A screenshot showing Freshdesk's Freddy AI assisting an agent with ticket suggestions, a key feature for setting up Freshdesk workflows to tag tickets by intent automatically.

Where built-in tools struggle

While Freshdesk gives you a good starting point, many support teams eventually hit a ceiling when they try to build truly intelligent Freshdesk workflows to tag tickets by intent automatically.

Your rules are always playing catch-up. Keyword-based rules are brittle. They fail to capture the huge range of ways customers express themselves. You end up in a constant cycle of updating and tweaking them, which is a job in itself.

Things get messy as you grow. As your business expands, so does the web of rules you need to maintain. A quick look at the Freshworks community forums shows that even experienced users find it tricky to build automations for more nuanced situations.

The AI only knows what's in Freshdesk. Freddy's effectiveness is capped by the data it can see. It can't learn from the detailed troubleshooting guides in Confluence or the policy documents in Google Docs, so its understanding of an issue is always incomplete.

You might need a developer on speed dial. For anything more advanced, you often have to start configuring webhooks with custom JSON payloads. This requires a technical background and can be a real headache to set up and troubleshoot when things go wrong.

A better way: Using a dedicated AI layer

So, if you're hitting a wall with Freshdesk's native tools, what's the alternative? Instead of trying to force a square peg into a round hole, you can bring in a specialized AI platform that plugs right into Freshdesk. Think of it as an intelligence layer that gives your existing helpdesk a major upgrade.

That's exactly why we built eesel AI. It acts as a brain for your support tools, figuring out customer intent and powering automations that go way beyond what Freshdesk can do on its own.

How eesel AI enhances Freshdesk workflows

By connecting to Freshdesk, eesel AI changes the game for ticket management.

• It understands what customers actually mean. Instead of just looking for keywords, eesel AI learns from your past tickets to grasp the real intent behind a customer's message. It figures out that "money back," "cancel my subscription," and "incorrect charge" are all really about "Billing Issues."

• It connects to all your company knowledge. eesel AI brings everything together. It doesn't just look at Freshdesk; it also connects to Confluence, Google Docs, Notion, and dozens of other places. This gives it the full picture needed to tag a ticket correctly and even suggest the right answer.

• You can get started in minutes. Seriously. Forget about spending weeks building rules. eesel AI has a one-click integration with Freshdesk. You can be up and running in the time it takes to grab a coffee, with no sales calls required.

• Test it out with zero risk. Before you flip the switch, eesel AI can run a simulation on thousands of your past tickets. This shows you exactly how many tickets it would have tagged and resolved, so you can launch it knowing it will work.

• You're in the driver's seat. You have full control over what the AI handles. You can start small, letting it manage simple requests like "order status," while escalating everything else to your team. The AI can also perform custom actions, like updating ticket fields or looking up order details from Shopify.

An example of eesel AI drafting a reply for a refund request within Freshdesk, showcasing how it enhances Freshdesk workflows to tag tickets by intent automatically.

Comparing native tools vs. eesel AI

It can be helpful to see things side-by-side. Here’s a quick breakdown of how Freshdesk’s built-in tools stack up against a dedicated AI platform.

Feature	Native Freshdesk Automation	eesel AI
Setup Speed	Can be slow; you have to build rules for every single scenario.	Super fast; one-click integration and the AI trains itself on your data.
Intent Recognition	Basic; mostly keyword-based with limited AI help.	Advanced; learns the nuance and intent from your past conversations.
Knowledge Sources	Stuck with Freshdesk data (tickets, macros, help articles).	Unified; connects to 100+ sources like Confluence, GDocs, Notion, etc.
Flexibility	Limited to a set list of actions (tag, assign, change status).	Highly flexible; can make API calls to other systems for custom actions.
Testing & Rollout	You have to test it live and hope for the best.	Includes a powerful simulation mode to test on old tickets first.

Freshdesk pricing for automation features

Okay, let's talk about the cost. Getting access to Freshdesk's automation features depends on which plan you're on. The basic stuff is available on most plans, but for the smarter AI features, you'll usually need a higher-tier plan or a paid add-on.

Here’s a quick look at the Freshdesk pricing plans (billed annually) as of late 2024:

Plan	Price (per agent/month)	Key Automation & AI Features
Growth	$15	Basic ticketing and automation rules.
Pro	$49	Advanced ticketing, custom reporting, and more automation options.
Enterprise	$79	Everything in Pro, plus audit logs, approval workflows, and skills-based routing.

Freddy AI Add-ons:

• Freddy AI Copilot: This starts at $29/agent/month (billed annually) and is needed for the features that assist your agents.

• Freddy AI Agent: This is for customer-facing bots and costs $100 per 1,000 sessions.

So, to really tap into Freshdesk's AI, you’re looking at a Pro or Enterprise plan plus the Freddy add-ons, which can add up quickly.

Move from rules to intelligence

Look, automating how you tag tickets in Freshdesk isn't just a nice-to-have; it's a huge step toward making your support team's life easier. The built-in Freshdesk workflows are a decent place to start, but they have their limits. Rule-based systems are just too rigid to keep up with the messy, unpredictable ways real customers talk, and they can't tap into all the useful info your team has stored outside the helpdesk.

By adding a dedicated AI layer like eesel AI, you can graduate from simple keyword matching to genuine intent recognition. It’s an approach that unifies your knowledge, lets you launch accurate automations in minutes, and frees up your team to focus on what they do best: helping customers with the tricky problems.

Supercharge your Freshdesk workflows today

Ready to stop fighting with clunky rules and see what real AI automation can do? You can connect your Freshdesk account to eesel AI with a single click and immediately see how it would have handled your past tickets.

It's a risk-free way to understand its impact and see how much time you could be saving.

Try eesel AI with your Freshdesk account for free