How to use the Gorgias AI agent to summarize long email threads for agents

We’ve all seen it. A support agent opens a Gorgias ticket and is greeted by a massive wall of text. It's a long, rambling email thread with tons of back-and-forth, and the customer's actual problem is buried somewhere in the middle. Think about how much time your team loses every day just trying to get up to speed on conversation histories. It’s a huge drag on productivity and an easy way to burn out your best agents.

This is where AI-powered summarization comes in. It helps agents understand the context of a conversation in seconds, not minutes, so they can focus on actually solving problems instead of digging for them.

Let's walk through two ways you can get this done. First, we'll look at the summary feature that’s already built into Gorgias. Then, we’ll explore a more powerful method using an integrated AI tool that can give you much better, more useful results.

What you'll need

Before we get started, here’s a quick checklist of what you’ll need to follow along:

• An active Gorgias account with the Helpdesk plan.

• Admin access to your account so you can adjust settings.

• For the second method, an eesel AI account, which is free and only takes a couple of minutes to set up.

Method 1: Using the built-in Gorgias summary feature

Gorgias has its own feature for ticket summaries, which is a decent place to start for any team just beginning to experiment with AI. It’s built to be simple and easy to find, but it’s good to know how it works and where you might run into its limitations.

Step 1: Getting to know the native Gorgias AI summary feature

The built-in Gorgias AI feature is pretty straightforward. It creates a short, one-line summary that points out the customer’s issue, their general sentiment, and where things stand with a resolution. It comes with the standard Helpdesk plan, so there are no extra costs to get it going, making it a perfectly fine starting point for teams new to AI.

Step 2: How to manually generate a summary

For any active ticket, agents can generate a summary whenever they need one. Here’s how you do it:

1. Open any ticket that has at least three messages in the thread.

2. Find and click the “Summarize” button inside the ticket view.

The AI will then scan the conversation and spit out its one-line summary. It's a fast way to get a quick overview. But there’s a catch: you can only generate a manual summary once per day for any single ticket. If the conversation changes direction or new details pop up, you can't refresh the summary until the next day, which can be pretty limiting.

Step 3: Understanding automatic summaries

Gorgias also makes summaries on its own, but only when a ticket is closed. This is mostly helpful for quality assurance (QA) reviews, where a manager might want to quickly scan the outcomes of past customer chats. It also comes in handy if a customer reopens an old ticket, as the agent can get a little context on the last problem without having to read the entire history.

Step 4: Understanding the limits of the native tool

While the built-in tool is nice to have, its limitations become pretty clear once you need more than a simple overview.

• It’s a bit too simple: A one-line summary is fine for a quick glance, but it often doesn't have the detail needed for complicated or nuanced problems. If a customer has several issues or has provided a lot of information, agents will almost definitely still need to read the whole thread to get the full story.

• It lacks real context: The Gorgias AI summarizes the current thread by itself. It doesn't learn from the thousands of successful tickets your team has already handled. It can't spot patterns or pull information from similar past tickets, which means its summaries are just a recap, not a real analysis.

• You get what you get: There's no way to customize the style, length, or focus of the summaries. The system gives you a single, one-size-fits-all output, which might not be what your team actually needs to work well. You’re kind of stuck with it.

For teams that are serious about being efficient, these limitations often mean the native tool is just a temporary stop on the way to a better solution.

Method 2: Getting advanced, context-aware summaries in Gorgias with eesel AI

If you’re looking for something with a bit more horsepower, this is it. This approach is for teams who know a basic summary is just the start and want to give their agents a real edge. The best part? You don't have to leave Gorgias. You just add a tool that's designed to give you genuinely smart insights.

Step 1: Connect eesel AI to Gorgias in minutes

Getting started with eesel AI is surprisingly easy. It's a self-serve platform, so you can forget about having to sit through sales calls or long onboarding sessions.

You just sign up, connect your Gorgias account with a single click, and you're good to go. eesel AI fits right into your existing helpdesk workflow without any complicated API work or needing a developer. You can go from signing up to having a fully integrated AI in just a few minutes.

Step 2: Let eesel AI learn from your whole support history

This is where you'll see the biggest difference. eesel AI doesn't just look at one ticket at a time; it trains on your entire history of past tickets and connects to all your knowledge sources, whether they're in a Gorgias help center, Google Docs, or Confluence.

This means summaries from eesel AI are created with a deep, contextual understanding of your business. It knows how your team has solved similar problems before, what your brand voice sounds like, and which details actually matter. This all leads to summaries that are much richer and more useful for your agents.

Step 3: Generate detailed summaries on-demand with the AI Copilot

Once everything is connected, agents can use the eesel AI Copilot right inside the Gorgias interface. It works like a smart assistant that’s always there to help.

When an agent opens a long thread, they can just ask the Copilot for a summary. Instead of a single line, they get a detailed, multi-point breakdown that might look something like this:

• Customer: Jane Doe (Order #12345) reported a damaged item.

• Timeline: The item was received on Oct 26. Agent 'Bob' offered a replacement on Oct 27.

• Current Issue: The customer is now asking for a refund instead of a replacement.

• Historical Context: Similar issues in the past were often resolved by offering a 15% discount coupon on a future purchase as a gesture of goodwill.

That last point is something a basic summary tool could never come up with. Because eesel AI learns from your past successes, it can offer insights that not only explain the problem but also hint at the best way to solve it. Plus, there are no daily limits on how often you can generate these summaries.

Step 4: Customize your summary style and persona

With eesel AI, you’re in the driver's seat. Using a simple prompt editor, you can tell it exactly how you want your summaries to be formatted. Want them as bullet points? Need them to always pull out order numbers and SKUs? Prefer a certain tone that matches how your team talks internally?

You can customize it all. This level of control makes sure the AI works exactly how your team needs it to, turning it into a personalized tool instead of a rigid, generic feature.

Pro tips for using AI summaries

A screenshot demonstrating the simulation feature of a Gorgias ChatGPT tool, which shows how the AI would have replied to real historical customer tickets before it is activated live.

Why advanced AI summaries are a game-changer

Reading through long email threads is one of the biggest productivity killers for any support team. It’s repetitive, takes up too much time, and keeps your agents from doing what they do best: helping customers.

While the native Gorgias AI agent can summarize long email threads for agents, its abilities are pretty basic. The one-line summaries are a start, but they often miss the deep, historical context that truly saves time and helps agents solve problems faster.

This is where a tool like eesel AI shines. It’s the perfect partner for Gorgias, improving the platform you already use with rich, useful summaries that are powered by your entire team's collective knowledge. It gives you the depth, control, and confidence that basic tools just can't offer.

At the end of the day, the goal isn't just to make threads shorter; it's to make your agents smarter, faster, and more effective.

Ready to give your Gorgias agents the tools they need to succeed? Connect eesel AI to your helpdesk in minutes and see the difference for yourself.