How to use Gorgias rules to prioritize VIP customers using customer tags (2025 guide)

Let me guess: you just ran a big sale, and now your support queue is overflowing. You know your best customers, the ones who buy again and again, are somewhere in that pile of tickets. The big question is, how do you find them and give them the fast, white-glove service they deserve before they start getting antsy?

Prioritizing your VIPs isn't just a nice-to-have; it's how you boost loyalty and lifetime value. For a lot of ecommerce brands, Gorgias is the helpdesk of choice for this, mostly because of its built-in automation features.

This guide will walk you through exactly how to set up Gorgias rules to prioritize VIP customers using customer tags. We'll also be honest about the headaches teams run into when they try to scale this setup. Then, we’ll look at a more advanced, AI-powered way to work with Gorgias to really level up your VIP support.

The importance of ticket prioritization

Ticket prioritization just means you stop treating your support queue as a "first-come, first-served" line. Instead, you organize incoming tickets by how important they are. It’s a simple shift, but for ecommerce brands, it changes everything.

Why is it such a big deal?

For starters, it keeps your best customers around. Your repeat buyers are your biggest asset. In fact, data from Gorgias shows that repeat customers generate 300% more revenue%20Long%2Dterm%20value%20comes%20from%20repeat%20customers) than first-time shoppers. Giving them priority service is a clear signal that you value their business, and that goes a long way.

It also protects your brand's reputation. A quick, helpful response can turn a frustrated high-spender into a fan who leaves glowing reviews. A slow one? That can end in a one-star rating that scares off new customers.

Finally, it makes your team’s life easier. When your support agents know which tickets actually move the needle for the business, they can focus their energy where it counts. This is especially true when things get busy and you don't have an army of agents to throw at the problem. Helpdesks like Gorgias are designed for ecommerce and come with tools to help you manage exactly this.

The standard method: How to set up Gorgias rules for VIP customers

Gorgias has a Rules engine that lets you automate a lot of this stuff based on simple 'IF/THEN' logic. Let's walk through how to set it up for your VIPs.

Identifying your VIPs

Before you build a single rule, you need to decide what "VIP" means for your store. It's different for everyone, but here are a few common ways to define it:

• Total spend: Anyone who has spent over a certain amount, like $500.

• Number of orders: Customers who have made, say, five or more purchases.

• Subscription status: If you run a subscription service, all your premium plan members are probably VIPs.

• Loyalty program tier: Customers in your top loyalty tiers, like "Gold" or "Platinum."

Once you know what you're looking for, you can start building the automation.

Creating the Gorgias rule

The process in Gorgias follows a pretty simple "IF this happens, THEN do that" structure.

1. Create a "VIP" tag. Think of tags as simple labels for organizing tickets. You’ll create a new tag, maybe named "VIP" or "High-Value," that your rule will slap onto the right tickets automatically.

2. Build the Rule. This is where you tell Gorgias what to look for. For example, your rule could be: "IF a customer's total spent is greater than or equal to $500, THEN add the tag 'VIP'."

A screenshot showing the rule creation window in Gorgias, where you can set up automation to tag tickets from VIPs.

3. Create a dedicated View. A View is just a filtered inbox. You can create a "VIP" view that shows only the tickets with the "VIP" tag. Your most experienced agents can then live in this queue, making sure your best customers always get a fast response.

An image of the Gorgias interface demonstrating how to set up a dedicated view for high-priority tickets.

Taking it a step further with the 'priority' field

Not too long ago, Gorgias added a dedicated field for setting ticket priority, with levels like "Low", "Normal", "High", or "Critical". This adds a bit more structure than tags alone because it can directly change the order tickets are assigned to your team.

You can tweak your rule to use this field. For instance: "IF a customer's order count is greater than 10, THEN set priority to 'Critical'." This is a nice little upgrade to make sure nothing important gets buried.

The hidden problems with relying only on Gorgias rules

This setup works great... at first. But as your business grows and support gets more complicated, you start to notice the cracks. The simple rule-based system starts to feel pretty rigid, and teams often run into the same few problems.

The messy rulebook problem

What begins as one simple VIP rule never stays that way. Soon, you need a rule for VIPs asking about returns. Then another for VIPs messaging you on Instagram. And another for VIPs who used a specific discount code. You blink, and suddenly you have a massive, tangled web of "if-then" logic.

This rulebook is a nightmare for anyone to understand, especially new hires. Worse, changing one rule might accidentally break five others. It all becomes a house of cards that everyone is afraid to touch.

Why automation hits a wall

Gorgias rules are great with data that’s already in Gorgias or its direct integrations like Shopify. But what happens when the answer a VIP needs is buried in a Google Doc with your warranty policy? Or a Confluence page about a new product? Or a random Slack thread from last week discussing a shipping delay?

A simple rule can't get to that information. It can tag the ticket, sure, but it can't actually solve it. So the ticket just sits in a queue waiting for a human to go on a scavenger hunt for the answer, which kind of defeats the whole point of automation.

The lack of safe testing for new rules

This one is a biggie. The second you hit "save" on a new rule in Gorgias, it's live. There's no draft mode or test environment. If you make a mistake and accidentally set up a rule to auto-reply to every single ticket, you could spam hundreds of customers with the wrong message before you even notice.

Gorgias doesn't have a "simulation" mode where you can see how a new rule would have worked on your past tickets. This turns every new automation into a high-stakes bet, and it often scares teams away from automating as much as they could.

A smarter way forward: Giving Gorgias a brain with eesel AI

So, what's the alternative? The answer isn't to rip out your entire helpdesk and start from scratch. A much smarter move is to add an AI layer that works with the tools you already use. This is exactly what a platform like eesel AI does. It plugs right into your Gorgias setup to fix the very issues we just covered.

Connect all your knowledge, not just helpdesk data

eesel AI goes straight for the siloed knowledge problem. It connects with over 100 sources, including Confluence, Google Docs, your old tickets, and even Slack. The AI reads and learns from all of it.

This means your AI agent can give a VIP a precise answer about a tricky product question by pulling info from a technical spec sheet, not just by looking at ticket fields. This lets you automate a much higher percentage of tickets, freeing up your team for conversations that actually require a human touch.

Build flexible automations you can actually test

Remember that "no-test" problem? eesel AI solves it with a powerful simulation mode. Before you ever let the AI talk to live customers, you can run it on thousands of your past tickets in a safe, sandboxed environment.

You get to see exactly how it would have performed, check the responses it would have sent, and get real forecasts on how many tickets it will resolve. This lets you tweak the AI's tone and knowledge before a single customer interacts with it. No more crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

Get full control with a customizable AI engine

While Gorgias rules are stuck with rigid "if-then" logic, eesel AI gives you a workflow engine you can fully customize. Using a simple prompt editor, you can tell the AI exactly what its personality should be, what tone of voice to use, and what actions it's allowed to take.

eesel AI can do a lot more than just tag tickets. It can look up real-time order info, process a return through an API call, or triage a ticket with way more nuance than a simple rule ever could. You get all the benefits of smart automation without giving up control.

Pricing comparison: Predictable costs vs. paying per ticket

Let's talk about the money part, because it’s a big deal. The way automation tools are priced can make or break your budget.

Gorgias AI pricing

The AI Agent features in Gorgias are usually sold as an add-on. As you can see on their pricing page, their model is based on usage: you pay around $0.90 to $1.00 for every ticket the AI fully resolves.

The catch is that your bill grows with every ticket the AI handles. This can lead to some surprisingly high and unpredictable costs, especially during busy seasons like Black Friday when your ticket volume shoots through the roof.

eesel AI pricing

eesel AI's pricing is built to be predictable. Instead of paying per resolution, you pick a plan that comes with a large bucket of monthly AI interactions (which can be a reply or an action, like tagging a ticket).

The main advantage here is that you know exactly what your bill will be. There are no per-resolution fees, so you aren't penalized for successfully automating more of your support. You can scale without worrying about a bill that spirals out of control.

Feature	Gorgias AI Agent	eesel AI
Pricing Model	Pay-per-resolution (~$0.90-$1.00)	Flat monthly fee (includes a set number of interactions)
Cost Predictability	Low (scales with ticket volume)	High (fixed monthly cost)
Included Features	AI Agent is an add-on	All products (Agent, Copilot, Triage) included in one plan
Best For	Teams starting with basic AI	Teams wanting to scale automation with predictable costs

Go beyond basic rules for smarter VIP support

Look, setting up Gorgias rules to prioritize VIP customers using customer tags is a great starting point for any growing store. It gets you organized and moves you past treating every customer exactly the same.

But as you’ve seen, a rules-only system can get messy fast. The complexity becomes hard to manage, your automation can't access all your company knowledge, and shipping untested rules is always a little nerve-wracking.

When you start feeling those growing pains, it’s time to look at something smarter. An AI tool like eesel AI is the natural next step. It enhances Gorgias without replacing it, giving you a safe and flexible way to provide amazing service to your most important customers.

Ready to see how you can give your Gorgias setup a serious boost? Try eesel AI for free or book a demo to see how the simulation engine works on your own tickets.