Customer emails

Can an AI reply to your customers' emails?

Yes, an AI can reply to your customers' emails. A Muzau agent replies to emails received at its address or forwarded to it, and, in your Gmail, Outlook or IMAP inbox, to the ones you hand over to it. It writes with what the Brain knows about your business: offers, prices, lead times, rules, tone. You choose what goes out without you; a reply it has doubts about waits for you in "To approve", with the reason.

Why customer emails take so much time

Many customer emails ask a question whose answer already exists: on a page of the site, in the terms of sale, in a reply sent to another customer. Answering means finding it again, rereading what the customer said earlier and not forgetting the question slipped in at the end of the message.

Handing this work to an AI raises the fear that it will answer off the mark or quote a wrong price. So the real question is: which emails, with what information, and who reviews. Your team keeps the relationship and the decisions; the agent takes the writing, based on what the business already knows.

How the agent goes about it

Input

Emails received at its address, forwarded, or handed over in your inbox

It does

Rereads the exchange, looks for the answer in the Brain and on your site, writes

It delivers

A reply in the same thread, sent on its own or submitted for your approval

The agent only replies to the emails you hand over

The customer writes to the agent's address, or you forward all or part of your inbox to a receiving address that Muzau creates for it. You can also connect your Gmail, Outlook or IMAP inbox, such as OVH or IONOS. Muzau sees the emails arrive, but the agent only replies to the ones you point it to: through a rule (sender, recipient, subject, attachment) whose "it replies" box is ticked, unticked by default, or through inbox sorting (see leaving no request unanswered). Out-of-office messages, newsletters, "no-reply" addresses and bounce messages get no reply. A contact form notification that names the visitor gets one, addressed to the visitor.

The agent replies with what your business knows

Before writing, the agent rereads the last ten messages of the exchange, so it does not ask again for information already given. It relies on the Brain: offers, prices, lead times, rules and tone; what Muzau pulls from your site, your documents and your past replies only enters it after your approval. For a specific question, it looks for the page of your site that answers it.

You choose what goes out without you

At setup, you decide whether it sends on its own or shows you everything before sending, and you can keep only certain actions for approval. In "To approve", you send the reply, correct its text or set it aside. Even when set to reply on its own, the agent holds a reply back if it says itself that it is not sure, promises that the customer will be called back without a card handing that to you, admits it does not know, or suggests a date that neither your calendar nor the message gave. The reply waits for you with the reason. Promises, admissions and dates are only detected in French; if a good reply is held back by mistake, one click sends it. The details are on the page can an AI get it wrong.

The reply goes in the same thread, and says an AI prepared it

The reply goes out from your connected inbox if you choose that, otherwise from your business's address at Muzau, in the same thread and to the person who wrote: the address is never chosen by the AI. Every email carries a small note at the bottom saying that an AI assistant prepared it; you reword it or remove it in the email settings.

Which emails to hand to an AI, and which to keep

An AI answers well what already has a written answer, and poorly what calls for a decision. Take your latest emails received and sort them into three piles.

• To hand over: what an offer includes, a usual lead time, a term of sale, the document to send.
• To hand over with review: prices, dates and availability, where a mistake commits the business.
• To keep: a complaint, a negotiation, a request for a discount, an unhappy customer.

For the emails handed over with review, check five points before approving a reply:

• it answers each of the customer's questions, including the one slipped in at the end of the message;
• it does not ask again for what the customer already wrote earlier in the exchange;
• every price, lead time or date appears in what you have written: site, brochure, past reply;
• it promises nothing the team has not decided: a call back, a discount, a goodwill gesture;
• it ends with what comes next: what the customer should do, or what the team will do, and when.

Review everything at first. A correction that comes back from one email to the next points to information the AI is missing, or a type of email to keep.

What it does not do

• In a connected inbox, it does not reply to everything: without a rule ticked "it replies" or inbox sorting, it sees the emails arrive but writes to no one.
• It only cites the pages of your site that Muzau has crawled, using a keyword search: if it does not find the answer, it tells the customer so and the question comes back to you.
• It only detects in French the phrasings that hold back a reply (promise of a call back, admission, suggested date): in another language, only a reply where it states a doubt itself is held back.

Frequently asked questions

Can an AI reply to emails directly in Gmail or Outlook?

Yes, but only to the ones you hand over to it. With Muzau, you set a rule on the sender, recipient, subject or attachment and tick "it replies", a box unticked by default, or you turn on inbox sorting, which files each email for an agent, for you or for no one. Without a rule or sorting, the agent sees the emails arrive but writes to no one.

What does the AI do when it does not know the answer to an email?

A Muzau agent that does not know the answer passes the request to you: a card in "To do" says who wrote, what needs doing and why, with the reply prepared for the customer. Each piece of information it lacks becomes a short question for you. You answer, it rewrites, you say yes and it goes out; Muzau then offers to remember your answer for next time.

Does the customer know the reply comes from an AI?

Yes, by default: every email from a Muzau agent carries a small note at the bottom, "This message was prepared by the AI assistant of" your business. You can reword this note or remove it in the email settings; informing the customer is then your responsibility.

Can an AI reply in English to a customer abroad?

Yes. A Muzau agent replies in English to a customer who writes in English: Muzau reads the language of the message, or the one used earlier in the exchange, and requires it for the reply. In a language other than French or English, the agent follows the customer's language without that instruction, and the AI note goes out in English.

Does the AI read the attachments a customer sends?

Yes, a Muzau agent reads the attachments of emails that arrive at its address or are forwarded to it: PDF, Word in .docx format, Excel and CSV, and takes them into account in its reply. A PDF scanned as an image is not read, and the agent does not act as if it had read it. In a connected inbox, it only reads the names of the attachments.