Gorgias macros to guide returns without a portal: A 2025 guide

Trying to manage customer returns without a proper portal can feel like you’re stuck in a loop. For support teams, it's the same repetitive tasks over and over again, and one tiny mistake can turn a straightforward return into a customer service mess. Your agents end up copying and pasting the same instructions all day, while your customers are left waiting for a simple answer.

If you’re a Gorgias user, you know it has some built-in tools to help out. But are they really enough? In this guide, we'll walk through how you can use native features like macros to handle returns. We'll also be honest about their limitations and show you a smarter way to automate the whole process with an AI that actually learns from your team's expertise.

What are Gorgias macros?

Think of Gorgias macros as pre-written templates or canned responses. They're a handy tool for your support team to answer common questions in a snap. Their main job is to populate the message body for you, and they can even pull in customer details like their name ("{{Customer First Name}}") or most recent order number ("{{Number of last order}}") using variables.

They are the first step toward automation in Gorgias, designed to cut down on repetitive typing and keep your responses consistent. Many teams even share their best macro templates in the Gorgias Community for all sorts of scenarios, including the all-too-common return request. They’re a solid starting point, but as you’ll soon find out, they’re just that, a start.

How to use Gorgias macros to guide returns

Alright, so how do you put these tools to work and build a workflow for returns? Let's get into it, starting with the problem and then building a macro-based solution.

The problem: The cost of manual returns

Here’s a scene that probably sounds familiar: a customer emails asking for a return. An agent opens the ticket, flips over to another tab to find the order in Shopify, double-checks your return policy (is it 15 days or 30 again?), copies the return instructions from a digital sticky note, pastes them into the reply, and finally hits send.

It’s a slow, manual routine that’s just asking for human error. Send the wrong address or outdated instructions, and you’ve just created another follow-up ticket and a pretty annoyed customer. It’s just not a practical way to handle returns as you grow.

The Gorgias interface showing a customer's Shopify order details directly within the ticket view, streamlining the returns process.

A step-by-step guide: Using Gorgias macros for returns

This is where Gorgias's native tools can give you a bit of breathing room. By combining Rules with Macros, you can create a basic automation flow. A "Rule" is the trigger; it scans incoming tickets for keywords like "return" or "refund." When it finds a match, it automatically applies a macro you’ve designated.

Here are a few examples you could set up for your own return process:

• Macro 1: Return Instructions (for an eligible order). This will likely be your most-used template. It confirms the customer is within the return window and gives them clear, step-by-step instructions on how to package the item and where to ship it. It saves your agent from typing out the same info ten times a day.

• Macro 2: Not eligible for return. For requests that fall outside the return window, this macro politely explains why the order can't be returned, pointing back to your store’s policy. It helps keep the tone consistent and professional, even when you have to deliver bad news.

• Macro 3: Damaged item received. When a customer gets a broken item, this macro should lead with empathy. It can apologize for the issue and ask for a photo of the damage so your team can sort it out quickly.

The limits of using Gorgias macros

While macros are certainly better than manually copy-pasting, they’re more of a band-aid than a permanent fix. They're a very basic type of automation, and their weaknesses become pretty clear once you start relying on them for anything slightly complicated.

• They're static and can't have a real conversation. A macro sends a block of text, and that's its whole job. If a customer replies with, "Thanks, but can I exchange for a different size instead?" the automation comes to a dead stop. A human agent has to step in, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of trying to automate the chat.

• Things get complicated really quickly. What begins as three simple macros can easily spiral out of control. You might need different macros for various return reasons (wrong size, damaged, changed their mind), different product types (final sale, electronics, clothing), and maybe even different customer tiers (VIPs might get free return shipping). The web of rules needed to trigger the exact right macro becomes a tangled mess that's easy to break.

• Manual updates are a pain. Every time you tweak your return policy, a manager has to go on a hunt to find every single macro that mentions it and update them one by one. If you miss one, you're giving customers conflicting information.

Beyond macros: Gorgias's AI Agent with Guidance

Gorgias saw the limitations of macros and introduced a more advanced tool: the AI Agent with Guidance. It's their next-gen solution for automation, but it comes with its own learning curve and set of hurdles.

What is the Gorgias AI Agent and Guidance?

The Gorgias AI Agent is built to have automated conversations with customers. You direct its behavior using a feature called "Guidance," which is basically a set of instructions you write using a "When, If, Then" logic.

This is a step up from a simple macro because it allows for some conditional thinking. For instance, you could write a single piece of Guidance that says: WHEN a customer asks for a return, IF the order was placed less than 30 days ago, THEN send them the return instructions. IF the order is older than 30 days, THEN let them know it's outside the return window.

The Gorgias interface for creating new AI Guidance, showing the 'When, If, Then' logic used to automate responses.

Where Gorgias AI Guidance misses the mark

On the surface, this sounds like a pretty big improvement. But once you start using it, you realize you're still wrestling with some of the same old problems.

• You're still programming it by hand. The AI doesn't actually learn anything on its own. It’s just a machine following the exact, literal instructions you've given it. Your support team effectively becomes a team of bot programmers, spending their time writing and debugging logic instead of helping customers with the really tricky issues.

• It can't learn from your team's experience. The AI Agent has no way of analyzing the thousands of successful return conversations your team has already handled. It can't pick up on your brand's specific tone of voice, understand nuanced edge cases, or learn the shortcuts your best agents use to solve problems fast. It only knows what you explicitly program it to know.

• The setup takes forever. Writing out comprehensive Guidance for every possible return scenario, including all the follow-up questions and different customer situations, is a huge undertaking. And just like with macros, it needs constant maintenance as your policies and products change. It’s a rigid system that can’t adapt on its own.

A quick look at Gorgias's own roadmap shows that their AI is still developing some foundational features, like the "Ability for AI Agent to send macros." This suggests it isn't quite the deeply integrated system needed to handle the complex, multi-step dance that real-world returns often require.

A better way: An AI that learns from your Gorgias data

Macros are too simple, and Guidance is too rigid. For teams that want to truly scale their support without adding headcount, the answer isn't to program a bot, it's to use an AI that can learn all by itself.

Move beyond static instructions with an AI that truly learns

This is where eesel AI comes into the picture. It's an AI platform that connects directly to your existing Gorgias helpdesk and gives it a major upgrade without forcing you to change your workflow. The setup is completely self-serve and you can get it running in just a few minutes.

The biggest difference? eesel AI automatically trains itself on your historical Gorgias tickets. It reads through thousands of your past conversations to learn your brand voice, understand your return policies in practice, and see how your top agents handle different situations. It learns from your best people, so you don't have to spend weeks writing manual instructions for every possibility.

How eesel AI improves on Gorgias macros

eesel AI was built to solve the exact problems that tools like macros and rule-based bots create. Here’s how it changes your return workflow:

• One-click setup. You can connect eesel AI to Gorgias, your help center, and other knowledge sources like Google Docs in minutes. There's no long sales call or developer time needed.

• Handles complex, multi-step actions. A return isn't just one reply; it's a whole process. eesel AI can look up an order in Shopify, check its eligibility against your return policy, tag the Gorgias ticket as "Return Initiated," and then give the customer the correct, personalized instructions, all in one automated interaction.

• Keeps all your knowledge in one place. Your return policy probably doesn't live inside a Gorgias macro. It might be in a Google Doc or a Notion page. eesel AI can connect to all your scattered knowledge bases, so when a policy changes, you just update it in one place. The AI instantly knows the new information, so you don't have to edit dozens of macros or Guidance scripts.

eesel AI's interface, where users can connect various knowledge sources like Gorgias tickets and Google Docs to train the AI.

Test it out before you automate anything

Switching to a new AI can feel like a big step, but it doesn’t have to be a blind one. eesel AI comes with a simulation mode that lets you test everything completely risk-free. You can run the AI over thousands of your past return tickets from Gorgias and see exactly how it would have replied.

This gives you a clear, data-backed look at your potential automation rate. You can tweak the AI's behavior and get comfortable with its performance before a single customer ever chats with it.

Gorgias pricing

To give all this some context, it helps to see how Gorgias lays out its pricing. Their plans are typically based on the number of billable tickets you handle each month, with AI features often available as an add-on or priced based on usage.

Scaling your returns process beyond macros

Handling returns is a fact of life in ecommerce, but it doesn't have to be a constant drain on your team's time and energy. You can start by moving away from purely manual work and using Gorgias macros for simple templates. As you grow, you might even layer in some rule-based logic with Gorgias's AI Guidance.

But eventually, teams that are serious about scaling will hit a wall with those tools. You can't program your way to a truly intelligent and adaptable support system. For that, you need an AI that learns. eesel AI is that next step, offering a solution that works seamlessly with Gorgias but brings a level of intelligence and automation that static tools just can't match.

Ready to stop managing returns by hand and programming your AI? eesel AI plugs into your Gorgias helpdesk and learns from your past tickets to deliver real automation. Start your free trial and see it in action in minutes.