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When you sign up and create a Freshdesk account, an Email channel will be crucial for managing customer inquiries effectively. Hence, the first step we recommend you do is to set up your Support Email under Admin > Channels > Email > New support email.
User Requirements: Ensure that you have an administrator role to set up and configure Email for your account.
In this article, you will learn about:
- Types of Emails
- Types of Mail servers
- Configuring Advanced Email settings
- Understanding how Email threading works
- Tips and best practices
Types of Emails
Freshdesk provides a default support email in the format support@yourcompany.freshdesk.com (also known as wildcard support address, for example, support@acme-tech.freshdesk.com) once you sign up to handle your support operations via Email. Any emails you receive on this address are automatically converted to tickets with the customer as the requester.
Additionally, you can also add multiple support email addresses of your email domain, such as support1@yourcompany.com, support2@yourcompany.com, etc for incoming and outgoing communications, streamlining support operations. For example, each department/team in your company can have different email addresses that can be configured with Freshdesk to handle support.
For each support email you configure, the reply emails from Freshdesk will automatically use the respective support email as the From email address. For example, if you receive tickets on support@acme-tech.com, the replies you send to customers will be from support@acme-tech.com.
Notes:
- You can add multiple support emails from the Growth plan. However, if you are on the Free plan, you can add only one email.
- We recommend making use of a support email of your email domain to avoid any issues with ticket creation.
When you have multiple support emails, you can mark a specific support email as global primary under Admin > Channels > Email (indicated by golden star
). The reply emails from Freshdesk will automatically use this primary support email when tickets are created through channels other than Email.
Similarly, when you have multiple product-specific support emails configured, you can mark a specific product support email as primary, and this support email will be used for emails sent on other channel-sourced tickets.
Note: Multiple products feature is available from the Pro/Estate plan in Freshdesk. Every product configured should have a unique support email associated with it.
You can also assign support emails to specific groups such that new tickets to the support email will get automatically assigned to the group.
Navigation: Admin > Channels > Email > Edit (pencil icon) next to specific support email.
To delete a support email, you can click on the 'delete' button next to it under Admin > Emails. If you are looking to do this for a primary support email,
- Global primary support email - Add another support email under Admin > Emails that isn't associated with any multiple products and then mark the newly added support email as the primary by clicking the star next to it. This would then give the option to delete the required support email.
- Product primary support email - Navigate to Admin > Support operations > Products > Edit next to specific product > Add another email > Enter a new support email and mark it as primary support email. This would then give the option to remove the previous support email; remove it and save the changes for the support email to be deleted from your account.
Make sure to remove the forwarding rule setup in the support mailbox settings when you delete the support email in Freshdesk (for the Freshdesk Mail Server option only).
Types of Mail Servers
While setting up additional support emails, Freshdesk provides you the option to choose the email server and email client with which you would like to manage your email transactions (incoming and outgoing):
Freshdesk mail server: Manage all your incoming and outgoing email transactions via the Freshdesk mail server. If you choose to use this option, you have to additionally configure forwarding rules in your email client (support mailbox) to forward the emails as tickets in your Freshdesk account.
Custom mail server: You can also use custom email servers or public servers like Gmail or Microsoft to send and receive emails through Freshdesk. This lets you manage all your email transactions outside Freshdesk.
You can learn more about adding a new support email here.
Configuring Advanced Email settings
Once you set up support emails for your Freshdesk account, you can configure advanced settings to customize your email setup. For example, you can allow agents to create new outbound tickets and choose to display their name as the sender on such tickets/replies. To view the advanced email settings:
- Go to Admin > Channels > Email.
- Click Advanced Settings.
Please refer to this article to understand more about the advanced settings options we support in customizing email setup.
Understanding how Email threading works
For every incoming email, Freshdesk performs the following checks to decide if the email should be created as a new ticket or threaded to an existing ticket as a reply:
Email markers check
Requester check
Email Markers Check
Freshdesk looks for the following three markers to decide if the email is a response to an ongoing ticket conversation, thus preventing duplicate tickets.
Ticket ID
Message-ID
Unique Identifier
Ticket ID
By default, when a ticket is created in your portal, a ticket ID will be generated. All the corresponding ticket notifications and updates between the customer and agent will have the ticket ID in the subject line in the format [#{{ticket.id}}].
For this reason, it is always recommended to configure the Email subject line with the ticket ID in the above format. This can be done from under Admin > Workflows > Email notifications > Templates > Agent reply template.
When the customer or agent replies to the ticket notifications, Freshdesk checks if the ticket ID matches and threads the email to the existing ticket accordingly. Additionally, you can configure a unique threading identifier and add it to all the outgoing templates to ensure the ticket replies are accurately threaded. For example, you can configure the ticket ID prefix, add it to your agent reply template, and send out emails to the requestor. For instructions on configuring ticket ID prefix, refer to Configuring Advanced Email Settings.
Message-ID
Every email has a unique identifier assigned by the email provider called Message ID. You can find the Message ID in the 'In-Reply-To' or 'References' section of the Original email, using which a reply gets threaded to the original email. Freshdesk uses the same method to thread replies to tickets.
Note: The Message ID usually expires seven days after the last response on the ticket. This means if there are no agent-customer conversations on a ticket for more than seven days, the Message ID automatically expires. In this case, after seven days, if there is a reply on the ticket, the threading logic looks for the Ticket ID or the Ticket Identifier in order to thread the reply to a ticket. If no matches are found, a new ticket will be created even if it is a reply to an existing ticket.
Ticket Identifier
In addition to the message ID, Freshdesk also has a unique identifier for every email notification sent. This is done using a hidden div tag in the email. If the tag is present, the email will be threaded correctly. For example, if the customer uses plaintext mode to reply, the ticket identifier will not work.
Email ticket threading also works when two different businesses use Freshdesk. Specifically, each Freshdesk account will add an identifier as part of the email message in the hidden div tag so that ticket threading works in Reply and Forward scenarios.
Note: Helpdesk address recipient check
- If you configure two email addresses in Freshdesk and receive an email with both these addresses in the same email, two separate tickets will be created. For example, if you have support@abc.com and billing@abc.com, and the customer sends an email to both these addresses in the same mail, the ticket will not be merged instead, two separate tickets will be created.
- Also in the middle of a ticket conversation, if the customer replies adding another support address, then that reply will be created as a separate ticket and also be displayed as a reply in the current ticket.
Requester Checks
Once an email is identified as a response to an existing ticket, Freshdesk checks if the sender's email satisfies one of the following conditions:
Sender's email address is:
Requester email address of the ticket
Agent email address of the ticket
Email address(es) in the CC of the ticket
Email address(es) to which the ticket was forwarded
Only when an email reply satisfies one of the Email Marker Checks and one of the Requester Checks Freshdesk appends the email response to an existing ticket.
Tips and best practices
To ensure that ticket replies are properly threaded and no duplicate tickets are created, ensure that you accurately configure the advanced email settings:
If you do not want to create a new ticket for each customer response, make sure to disable this setting.
It is recommended to ensure that the requester check option is disabled.
Additionally, also ensure to disable the “Create a new ticket when subject line changes”.
For more details, check Configuring Advanced Email Settings.
