Did you know that more than 361 million emails are sent every day? No wonder it can feel hard to keep up with replying. However, not every message needs a reply — or needs one that requires your full time and effort. That’s where AI email responders can help.
This guide explains the benefits of an AI email responder.We'll also discuss how to use AI to respond to emails based on your preferences.
What is an AI email responder?
An AI email responder uses artificial intelligence to analyze, streamline, and often automate your email responses.
AI email responders can handle basic tasks like acknowledging receipt of an email, responding to common inquiries, or even generating more sophisticated replies based on past email patterns or context.
For example, let's look at the process you've endlessly repeated since you first got an email address.
When you're prompted to respond to an email, you typically:
- Analyze the contents and decide if you want to respond now or later — or if you want to automate a reply or personally answer
- If you choose to immediately answer the message yourself, start with a greeting
- Reply in kind to any questions or concerns
- End with closing remarks
If you leave the email to deal with later, you simply delay the same process. But what if you choose to automate a reply? With innovative AI tools, you can simplify these steps to focus on critical emails requiring immediate attention and streamline replies to less urgent messages.
After all, not all email functions require user action or review. Many messages can be automated, like confirming you received an email, coordinating meetings, or responding to a basic inquiry. In the next section, we’ll discuss how you can use AI to automate a response to a customer’s question.
How to use generative AI to respond to an email
Let's take a look at how you could prompt AI to reply to an email.
Here's an example email you might receive:
Hi! I recently purchased your product and was looking for the handbook on your website but could not find it. I had a great experience with this product and would appreciate it if you could send me an electronic copy of the handbook. Thanks!
You recognize this opportunity to (1) help a loyal customer, (2) share their feedback with the product development team, and (3) pitch the accompanying classes that instruct customers on how to use your product.
You can use those desired outcomes to craft your prompt:
Respond with a professional yet relatable tone. Thank the customer for their feedback and invite them to sign up for classes that teach them more about our product. Highlight the benefits of the classes, which include recorded video instructions, instructor office hours, and a 10% off code upon completion. Here is the email [paste email contents here].
You can ask AI to generate multiple responses and instruct it to tweak certain phrasings as necessary.
After you've responded to the customer, move on to point 2) above — sharing feedback with the product development team.
How does an AI email responder work?
AI typically leverages natural language processing and machine learning to determine important phrases and topics, evaluate tone and intent, and produce suitable responses.
Natural language processing
Natural language processing (NLP) enables AI algorithms to recognize patterns and rules to generate appropriate email responses.
AI breaks down the language used in the email to understand linguistic nuances and extract relevant information. Although not yet as refined as our own ability to process language, AI's capabilities evolve as it interacts with human speech.
Machine learning algorithms
AI also relies on machine learning algorithms to learn trends, patterns, and language structures. As with natural language processing, AI's machine-learning capabilities evolve as it analyzes more data. On a smaller scale, machine-learning algorithms also learn your phrasing and individual language structures the more you interact with them.
What are the benefits of an AI email responder?
Integrating an AI email responder into your workflow, rather than manually using a separate generative tool, offers several benefits.
For example, you can task AI with replying to emails containing common questions with approved responses to quickly address your customers' needs. AI email responders can also schedule appointments, highlight critical information, and maintain consistency in voice and tone.
Quickly replying to an email yourself can increase the chances of spelling and grammar errors. AI email responders can automatically use proofread responses to maintain professionalism. Leaning on AI to generate email responses can also effortlessly scale your inbox and allow you to tackle more messages each day.
When you use AI to respond to an email, you also reduce your stress and workload. Turning your attention to tasks requiring more strategy and brain power can better allocate resources and increase efficiency.
How can you respond faster with Superhuman AI?
Superhuman AI is a revolutionary set of features to help you fly through your inbox and focus on what matters most. Turn hours of slugging through endless emails into minutes of reviewing, tweaking, and actioning.
Ask AI
With Ask AI, you can get rapid answers without having to remember senders, guess keywords, or comb through messages. It’s also blazingly fast — 2-3x faster than the AI search in Gmail and Outlook, which makes you 2-3x faster, as well.
Instant Reply
Imagine waking up to an inbox where every email has a draft reply. You would simply edit, then send. Sometimes, you wouldn’t even edit. That’s Instant Reply. Unlike Gmail, these replies are full emails and are ready to send. Unlike Outlook, these replies are precomputed, so you never have to wait.
Optimize your email replies with Superhuman
Superhuman is the most productive email experience ever made. Get started with Superhuman, and save four hours or more every single week.
