How to auto-resolve support tickets and escalate the rest with n8n
The problem
Many tickets can be answered from your docs or the customer's order data, while billing and security issues need a person quickly. Doing that split by hand slows everyone down.
Tools needed
- n8n
- OpenAI (GPT-4o-mini)
- SMTP email
- Google Sheets
- Slack
- Optional: knowledge-base and order-history APIs
Step-by-step recipe
- Receive tickets on an n8n webhook from your contact form, chat widget or API.
- Run a knowledge-base search and an order-history lookup in parallel.
- Ask the model to classify category, priority and sentiment, and to draft a reply grounded in what was retrieved.
- If the ticket is resolvable, send the reply as an HTML email, log it in Google Sheets and post a note to Slack.
- Otherwise route it to a category-specific Slack channel with the draft, a confidence score and notes. Always escalate billing and refund tickets, and send account-security issues to an urgent channel.
Copyable prompt
You are a first-line support agent for [COMPANY]. Use ONLY the knowledge-base excerpts and order data below. Decide whether you can fully resolve the ticket.
Return JSON: {"category": "...", "priority": "low|normal|urgent", "sentiment": "...", "can_resolve": true|false, "confidence": 0-1, "draft_reply": "...", "notes_for_human": "..."}
Rules: billing, refund and account-security tickets always get can_resolve = false. Never invent policies that are not in the excerpts.
Ticket: {{ticket}}
Knowledge base: {{kb_results}}
Orders: {{orders}}Original template written by AgentRecipes, not copied from the source. Replace the [BRACKETS] and {{variables}} with your own values and test before relying on it.
What the builder reported
The author reports very low running costs (about $0.90 a month at 50 tickets a day on GPT-4o-mini, by their estimate). The post gives no resolution-rate or accuracy figures.
These are the source author's own claims. AgentRecipes has not tested or verified them.
Watch out for
- Hard-code escalation for money and security topics instead of leaving it to the model.
- You need OpenAI, SMTP, Google Sheets and Slack credentials before anything runs.
Source
Original write-up: n8n Community forum ↗
Found via Agent Use Cases: “Auto-resolve support tickets and escalate the rest”. This recipe summarises the source in our own words; read the original for the full details. Link last checked 2026-10-15.
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