Canned responses

Most support teams answer the same forty questions forever. Canned responses turn those into two keystrokes.

Creating one

From the dashboard, save a reply with a short shortcut. In a conversation, type the shortcut and the full text expands into the composer, where you can edit it before sending.

Keep shortcuts short and predictable. A convention that works: a leading character plus the topic — /ship, /return, /hours, /refund-status.

What to write first

Rather than guessing, look at your last hundred conversations and count. The list will be shorter and duller than you expect. Typical starting set for an ecommerce store:

• Shipping times and costs by region
• Returns window and how to start one
• Where the tracking link is
• Order amendment before dispatch
• Out of stock / restock timing
• Payment methods

For SaaS:

• How to reset a password
• How to change plan or cancel
• Where the API key lives
• Known issue acknowledgement
• Where to file a feature request

Keep the seams visible

A canned response should be a starting point, not the whole message. The pattern that reads as human:

1. One line specific to what they actually asked, typed by you.
2. The canned block with the details.
3. One line offering the next step.

Sending the canned block alone is how customers learn they are talking to a macro.

Canned responses versus the AI chatbot

There is an obvious question here: if you have an AI chatbot trained on your content, why maintain canned responses too?

Because they serve different moments. The bot answers before a human is involved and handles the visitor’s own phrasing. Canned responses are for the agent, mid-conversation, where the context is already established and you want precision — exact policy wording, an exact set of steps. Teams that run both use the bot for deflection and canned responses for speed.

Longer read: canned responses guide and live chat scripts and templates.

Next: train the AI chatbot.