An overview of Gorgias first response time and how to improve it

If you're in e-commerce, you know that speed matters. A lot. When a customer has a question before buying, they aren't going to hang around for hours waiting for you to reply. They’ll just find a competitor who can answer them faster. This is why First Response Time (FRT) is such a big deal for any support team, especially when you're using a platform like Gorgias that’s built for fast-moving brands. A quick FRT isn't just a nice-to-have for customer satisfaction; it can directly affect your sales.

But just knowing that FRT is important doesn’t actually fix it. You need a real plan. Gorgias gives you some handy built-in tools, but many teams eventually hit a wall. They find themselves stuck, trying to be fast without sacrificing the quality of their answers as more and more tickets pour in. This guide will walk you through what your Gorgias first response time really means, how to get the most out of its native features, and when it might be time to bring in a smarter AI solution to give your customers the instant support they expect.

What is Gorgias first response time?

In Gorgias, First Response Time is pretty straightforward: it’s the time that passes between a customer sending a message and an agent sending the first reply back. Think of it as a direct measure of how long your customers are left waiting for a real person to acknowledge them. According to Gorgias's own documentation, the calculation intentionally ignores automated messages from Rules. It’s focused on that first human touchpoint to get a true sense of the customer's wait.

How your Gorgias first response time is calculated

Gorgias starts the clock the moment the first customer message arrives and stops it when the first message from a human agent is sent.

A few things to keep in mind about their method:

• It focuses on human replies: Any initial automated responses you have set up with Rules are ignored, so the metric shows the genuine wait time for a personal response.

• The clock doesn't stop: The timer includes nights and weekends, which makes sense given that e-commerce is a 24/7 world.

• It uses the median, not the average: Gorgias reports the median FRT. This is actually pretty smart because it prevents a few oddball tickets from skewing the numbers. It gives you a much more realistic picture of your typical performance.

A screenshot of the Gorgias analytics dashboard, showing where key metrics like first response time are tracked.

What are the industry benchmarks for Gorgias first response time?

Customer expectations can change wildly depending on how they contact you. A 24-hour reply on email might have been fine a few years ago, but today’s shoppers are a bit more demanding. Drawing from data across thousands of brands, Gorgias offers benchmarks that reveal how different channels usually perform.

For instance, in the Food and Beverages industry, the median Gorgias first response time for email is around 11.5 hours. For live chat, it's 1.5 hours, and for SMS, it drops to less than an hour at 0.7 hours. A fast response on chat is expected, but getting your email response time under an hour? That can really make you stand out.

How to improve Gorgias first response time with native tools

Gorgias has a decent set of built-in features to help you handle tickets more efficiently. Before you start looking at third-party tools, it’s worth making sure you’re squeezing every bit of value out of what you already have. But, it's also good to be aware of where these tools have their limits.

Use macros and templates for faster replies

Macros are basically Gorgias's version of canned responses. They’re a must-have for tackling common questions without having to type out the same answer over and over.

• Where they shine: Perfect for answering those frequent questions like, "What’s your return policy?" or "Where's my order?" You can even use variables to automatically pull in the customer's name or their last order number, which is a nice touch.

• How it helps FRT: It cuts down on how much time an agent spends typing, which means they can send that first reply much faster.

• But here's the catch: Macros are still manual. An agent has to read the ticket, figure out which Macro is the right fit, and then send it. It definitely speeds things up, but it’s not instant and still takes up an agent's time for every single ticket.

Automate simple tasks with Gorgias Rules

Rules are the main way you can automate things inside Gorgias. You can create simple "if this, then that" workflows to handle tasks automatically.

• Where they shine: They’re great for ticket triage. You can use Rules to automatically add tags (like 'urgent' or 'return'), assign tickets to the correct department, or send a quick auto-reply if a message comes in after hours.

• How it helps FRT: While those auto-replies don't technically count for the official FRT metric, they do a great job of managing customer expectations by confirming their message was received. Even better, by automatically tagging and routing tickets, Rules get the right queries in front of the right agents sooner, which helps lower the human response time.

• But here's the catch: Rules can get complicated and messy as you grow. Trying to create and maintain dozens of rules for every possible customer scenario is a huge time sink and it’s easy to make mistakes. They’re also based on simple logic and can’t really grasp the nuance or intent behind a customer’s message.

An example of the Gorgias Rules editor, where users can create 'if-then' logic to automate ticket assignments and improve Gorgias first response time.

Use the Gorgias AI Agent and Flows

Gorgias also offers its own AI Agent and self-service chat flows to handle more of the workload.

• Where they shine: Flows are good for guiding customers through a few questions to solve simple problems, like tracking an order. The AI Agent can answer basic FAQs and take care of simple actions, like processing a return.

• How it helps FRT: These tools can deliver an instant, 0-second FRT by resolving an issue without a human ever getting involved.

• But here's the catch: This automation is usually limited to what’s in your Gorgias Help Center or basic Shopify actions. It starts to struggle with more complex questions that require digging up info from other places, like a Google Doc or a technical page in Confluence. On top of that, the AI Agent has a per-resolution pricing model, which can lead to some unpredictable costs.

A screenshot showing the Gorgias AI Agent instantly resolving a 'Where is my order?' request to achieve a 0-second Gorgias first response time.

The ceiling: Why native tools limit your first response time

For many growing e-commerce brands, there comes a point where relying only on Gorgias’s native tools just doesn’t cut it anymore. You might find your team is spending more time managing the automation than actually benefiting from it. This is where the limitations really start to show.

Why rule-based systems don't scale

A support team can quickly outgrow a system that runs on rigid Rules. What happens when you expand to a new country with totally different shipping policies? Or launch a new product line with its own set of FAQs? You find yourself creating more and more rules, which start to conflict with each other and become a nightmare to troubleshoot. Suddenly, your team is spending its days untangling a web of complex logic instead of actually helping customers.

The challenge of siloed knowledge sources

Let's be real, your company’s knowledge isn’t all neatly tucked away in your Gorgias Help Center. It’s spread out everywhere: in Google Docs, Confluence pages, random internal Slack channels, and buried in past ticket conversations. Gorgias’s native AI can’t easily tap into all of this scattered information. This means it can only answer a tiny fraction of customer questions, forcing your agents to go hunting for answers manually, which kind of defeats the whole point of automation.

The risk of unpredictable pricing

Gorgias's AI Agent charges you for each automated interaction. At first glance, that seems fair enough; you only pay for what you use. The problem is, during busy seasons like Black Friday, this can lead to a surprise bill that's thousands of dollars higher than you were expecting. This unpredictable pricing makes it tough to budget and basically penalizes you for being successful with automation.

A better way: Integrate a true AI agent to slash response times

To break through that automation ceiling, you need an AI solution that works with Gorgias, not against it. A genuinely smart AI agent should be able to bring all your knowledge together and give you the control to automate with confidence.

This is where a tool like eesel AI comes into play. It plugs right into Gorgias and acts like a central brain for your entire support operation. It can provide instant, accurate answers and automate tasks that are far beyond what the native tools can handle.

Unify all your knowledge

The biggest difference is the ability to connect to all your different knowledge sources. With eesel AI, you can train your AI agent on:

• Your entire ticket history: The AI learns from every past solution and automatically adopts your brand's voice.

• External documentation: You can connect knowledge bases from Confluence, Google Docs, Notion, and other platforms with just a click.

• Real-time data: You can even use custom API actions to have the AI look up live order information from Shopify, check inventory levels, or pull data from any of your internal systems.

This means your AI can answer tricky, multi-part questions in an instant, which drastically cuts down on escalations and leads to more one-touch resolutions.

An AI agent like eesel AI connecting to various knowledge sources, which is key to improving the Gorgias first response time for complex questions.

Go live in minutes

Unlike some other AI platforms that require you to completely overhaul your helpdesk, eesel AI is designed to be incredibly simple to set up. You can connect your Gorgias account with a single click and have a basic AI agent up and running in minutes, all on your own. There are no mandatory demos or long sales calls just to get your foot in the door.

Test with confidence: Simulate your AI's impact

Nervous about letting an AI chat with your customers? That’s totally understandable. eesel AI has a powerful simulation mode that lets you test your setup on thousands of your past Gorgias tickets. You can see exactly how the AI would have responded, get a forecast of your potential automation rate, and tweak its behavior in a safe environment before you ever turn it on for live customers. It allows you to roll out automation at your own pace and with peace of mind.

The simulation mode in eesel AI, allowing teams to safely test automation and its impact on their Gorgias first response time before going live.

Take full control with customizable workflows

eesel AI gives you fine-grained control over how your automation works. You can decide exactly which types of tickets the AI should handle and what actions it's allowed to take.

• Selective Automation: You could start small by having the AI only handle your "Where Is My Order?" (WISMO) tickets and escalate everything else. As you get more comfortable, you can gradually expand its responsibilities.

• Custom Actions: You can define the AI's persona, its tone of voice, and what it’s allowed to do, from simply tagging tickets and updating fields in Gorgias to calling an external API to process a return for a customer.

This level of control, paired with transparent and predictable pricing (no paying per resolution), makes eesel AI a more scalable way to truly improve your Gorgias first response time.

Improving your Gorgias first response time means looking beyond native tools

Improving your Gorgias first response time is one of the best things you can do to make customers happier and grow your revenue. While Gorgias's own tools like Macros and Rules offer a great starting point, they have some clear limits that can hold you back as you scale.

To offer truly instant, high-quality support, you need to bring all your knowledge together and use intelligent automation you can trust. A solution like eesel AI works with your existing setup to give you a powerful, controllable, and predictable way to automate support and keep your customers happy.

Ready to see how you can bring that Gorgias first response time down? Try eesel AI for free.