Gorgias automation rules to auto tag tickets by topic

If your Gorgias inbox feels like a chaotic free-for-all of urgent problems, simple questions, and spam, you're not alone. It's tough to prioritize what matters when everything is jumbled together. How do you spot trends or give customers the quick replies they expect? This is exactly where ticket tagging saves the day. By automatically sorting conversations as they come in, you can finally bring some order to the chaos.

This guide will walk you through setting up Gorgias automation rules to auto-tag tickets by topic. We’ll cover the common setups, a few best practices, and honestly, the walls you’ll eventually hit as your business grows. We'll also look at a smarter, AI-driven way for teams that are ready to ditch the manual upkeep and really scale their support.

Understanding Gorgias automation rules to auto tag tickets by topic

Gorgias automation rules are a built-in feature that lets you automate repetitive tasks using simple "if this, then that" logic. Think of them as a set of instructions you give your helpdesk to handle tickets on its own, without anyone needing to lift a finger.

Every rule has three main parts:

• Trigger: This is the event that starts the rule. For tagging, it’s almost always "When a ticket is created."

• Conditions: These are the specific things a ticket has to match for the rule to run. For example, "IF the message body contains the word 'return'."

• Actions: This is what the rule actually does when the conditions are met. For instance, "THEN add the tag 'return-request'."

Auto-tagging is easily one of the most useful ways to use these rules. It’s the first step to organizing your entire workflow, whether you're creating special views for certain issues or pulling reports to see what your customers are asking about most.

Setting up Gorgias automation rules to auto tag tickets by topic

Getting started with auto-tagging rules in Gorgias means heading to the 'Rules' section in your settings and spelling out that "if-then" logic for different situations. The process is pretty straightforward, but how well your tagging works depends entirely on how well you can guess the exact words your customers will use.

Here are a few ways teams usually set up their rules to tag tickets.

Tagging based on message content and intent

The most common method is to create rules that scan an incoming message for specific keywords. If a ticket mentions "refund," "exchange," or "damaged," you can have a rule automatically slap on the right tag.

Gorgias also has a built-in intent detection feature you can use as a condition. For instance, you could create a rule that adds a "cancellation" tag if Gorgias thinks it has spotted the "order/cancel" intent.

A screenshot showing the interface for setting up Gorgias automation rules to auto tag tickets by topic based on message content.

But this is where things start to get tricky. This approach is fine for simple, predictable questions, but it struggles with any kind of nuance. It can't figure out synonyms ("send back" vs. "return"), common typos, or tricky sentences where a keyword is used in a totally different way. You'll quickly find yourself making a massive list of keywords just to cover the basics, and you’ll still miss tickets.

Tagging based on customer data and channel

You can also set up rules that use customer data from your Shopify integration. For example, you could tag tickets from anyone who has spent over $500 as "VIP" to help your team prioritize them. You can also tag tickets by where they came from, like "Facebook-Comment" or "Live-Chat," to keep your omnichannel support organized.

This image displays how Gorgias automation rules can use Shopify customer data to auto-tag tickets.

The problem? This only works if your data is perfectly clean and integrated. And more importantly, it tags tickets based on who the customer is, not what they need. A VIP with a critical shipping problem gets the same "VIP" tag as someone asking a basic question, which doesn't give your agents much context on what to tackle first.

Tagging based on sentiment and other criteria

Gorgias lets you use sentiment detection (positive or negative) to tag social media comments. This can be handy for sending negative feedback to a manager or collecting glowing reviews. You could also set up rules for other situations, like tagging tickets that show up after hours so your team can jump on them first thing in the morning.

Unfortunately, automated sentiment analysis is often a bit too simple for real-world conversations. It can easily miss sarcasm or complex language, leading to wrong tags and skewed reports. A customer saying, "Wow, great job taking a week to ship my order," might get tagged as "positive-feedback," which is the opposite of helpful.

The limitations of Gorgias automation rules

Look, Gorgias automation rules are a decent place to start. They can definitely help you get a grip on a low-volume inbox. But as your business grows and customer questions get more complicated, the cracks in a manual, rule-based system start to show.

• They’re too literal. Rules follow your IF-THEN logic to the letter and have zero ability to understand context. They can't tell the difference between "I want to return this item" and "I can't wait to return to your website to buy more." This stiffness leads to a lot of mis-tagged tickets that your team has to fix by hand, which kind of defeats the whole point of automation.

• They become a nightmare to manage. As you add more products and support scenarios, your list of rules will explode. Before you know it, you're trying to manage a tangled web of hundreds of rules. Updating or troubleshooting them becomes a massive chore, where one small change can break five other things.

• They don’t get smarter. A rule-based system is static. It doesn't learn from how your team actually works. If your agents are constantly re-tagging a certain type of ticket that a rule keeps getting wrong, the rule doesn't adapt. You have to go in and tweak it yourself every single time, meaning you’re always playing catch-up.

This is where a real AI system offers a totally different way of working. Instead of you trying to predict every possible keyword, an AI agent learns patterns directly from your entire support history. An AI-powered tool like eesel AI understands what customers actually mean with a level of nuance that rules just can't match. Its Triage product learns from thousands of your past tickets to automatically tag, route, and even close tickets, saving you from the endless cycle of building and fixing rules.

A smarter approach: AI-powered tagging with eesel AI

eesel AI connects directly to your Gorgias helpdesk in minutes. It doesn't replace Gorgias; it supercharges it with AI that picks up right where manual rules fall short.

Here’s why it’s a smarter way to go:

• It learns from your past tickets. The biggest advantage of eesel AI is its ability to analyze your historical conversations. It automatically figures out your unique issue types, your brand's voice, and the correct tagging procedures your agents already use. This means you don't have to build dozens of rules for complex topics; the AI gets it from day one.

• It understands true intent. It goes way beyond just looking for keywords. eesel AI gets the real meaning behind a customer's message, which means way more accurate tagging for nuanced issues like "product feedback" versus "damaged item."

• It handles complexity easily. Where you might need 20 different Gorgias rules to properly categorize all the different types of return requests (wrong item, wrong size, damaged, late), eesel AI can handle thousands of variations in customer language with a single, self-learning model.

• You can simulate before you automate. This is a huge one. eesel AI has a simulation mode that shows you exactly how it would have tagged thousands of your past tickets before you turn it on. This gives you total confidence in its accuracy and a clear picture of its impact. Gorgias rules offer nothing like this; you just have to switch them on and hope for the best.

Feature	Gorgias Automation Rules	eesel AI Triage
Logic	Manual IF/THEN rules	AI-powered intent detection
Setup	You have to create every single rule	Learns automatically from your data
Accuracy	Relies on keywords; struggles with nuance	Understands context, typos, and synonyms
Maintenance	Needs constant tweaking and updates	Improves on its own; almost no upkeep
Testing	No real way to test before going live	Powerful simulation on historical data
Scalability	Quickly gets messy and fragile at scale	Scales easily with your ticket volume

Comparing pricing: Gorgias automation rules vs. eesel AI

When you're looking at automation tools, it’s important to understand how you'll be charged. Gorgias's pricing is mostly based on the number of "billable tickets" you handle each month. As you move up their plans, you unlock more features and higher ticket limits. They also have a separate "AI Agent" product that charges you for each automated resolution, which can make your monthly bill pretty unpredictable.

On the other hand, eesel AI's pricing model is built to be simple and predictable.

• No per-resolution fees. Plans are based on a set number of AI interactions per month (an interaction is any AI reply or action). This means you won’t get a surprise bill after a busy month.

• All-inclusive plans. All the core products, including the AI Agent for full resolutions, AI Triage for tagging, and AI Copilot for helping your human agents, are included in every plan. You don't have to pay for a bunch of different add-ons.

• Flexible subscriptions. You can start with a month-to-month plan and cancel whenever you want. This gives you the freedom to try it out and see the value for yourself without getting locked into a long contract.

Beyond Gorgias automation rules to auto tag tickets by topic

Gorgias automation rules are a perfectly fine starting point for basic ticket tagging. They can help clean up your inbox and bring some structure to your workflow. But for any support team that's growing, they quickly become a bottleneck. Relying on a system that needs constant manual work and can't actually learn from your team just creates more work in the long run.

AI-powered automation is the next logical step to becoming truly efficient. By letting an AI learn from your data to handle all the ticket organization, you free up your team to focus on what they do best: creating great customer experiences.

Ready to stop fussing with endless rules and let AI organize your tickets for you? Try eesel AI with your Gorgias helpdesk and see how it can intelligently tag your tickets in minutes.