When Aide writes a draft for your team to send, instead of a reply it sends itself, it now writes the reply as it should go out and leaves a short blank in square brackets wherever a fact is missing, such as "Your order ships on [ship date]." It no longer tells the customer what it doesn't know or offers to pass them to the team, since the person sending the draft is the team.
How it behaves
- A blank instead of an apology: where the knowledge or the order doesn't have the answer (a restock date, a refund amount), the draft names the missing fact in a few words in brackets, in the customer's language, and your teammate fills it in before sending. When the customer can give the detail themselves (an order number), the draft asks for it.
- The blanks are listed first: a note that carries such a draft opens with "Fill in before sending:" and the blanks, in bold in Gorgias and Zendesk, so nobody sends one by mistake.
- Blanks you can't miss: in the note and in what the Aide card's insert-draft macro puts in
Gorgias's reply box, each blank reads
⟦FILL IN: ship date⟧instead of[ship date], in bold where the helpdesk shows formatting, so a blank left in by mistake stands out in the reply box before sending. The Aide card shows the draft the same way. - Where the draft goes: Front's shared draft, the Aide panel's draft and the Aide card's
insert-draft macro in Gorgias get the reply alone, without that line. Front's shared draft and
the Aide panel's draft keep the plain
[ship date]form. - Shorter drafts: a draft leads with the answer, without restating the question or closing with an offer of more help.
- Drafts see the customer's orders: a draft reads the customer's verified orders, their shipments and your returns portal as a reply Aide sends does, so it answers from them: where an order is, a link to its tracking, and a link that opens your returns portal on the order (Loop, AfterShip or your own portal). Drafts never offer to cancel, refund or change an order; only a reply Aide sends itself can. The same goes for drafts written when a teammate mentions Aide.
- No blank for what hasn't happened yet: an order that hasn't shipped is described as not shipped yet, without a blank for a tracking number that doesn't exist. A draft never leaves a blank for your returns portal or an order's tracking link when it can add the link itself.
- Never a decision or an action: a blank only stands for a fact your team can look up. Aide still never writes that a refund, credit or exception was granted; it offers it or says the team will take care of it, as before.
- Which conversations get blanks: inboxes where Aide only drafts, topics that need review, scenarios that ask for a draft or escalate with a comment, and shadow mode, which shows the draft Aide would write.
- Replies Aide sends never contain a blank: where Aide sends replies itself, it writes as before and says plainly what it doesn't have. A reply that still contains bracketed text is never sent: Aide hands the conversation to your team instead. If a conversation turns out to be one Aide may send only after its draft was written, the draft goes to your team as a note.
- Handoff drafts where Aide sends replies: unchanged.
- Long blanks count too: a blank of any length is listed and marked, so a long one such as
[recommended size and width from their past orders]is no longer missed, and a reply Aide sends that contains one is never sent. Order numbers, amounts, dates and links in brackets are not blanks (since October 16).