Email Channel
The Email Channel lets your agent automatically reply to incoming support emails. Every agent gets a unique AIChatVault inbox address. Forward your support email there, and the agent will read each incoming email, search your knowledge base, and send a reply — instantly, 24/7, without any human intervention.
How it works
- •A customer sends an email to your support address (e.g. support@yourcompany.com).
- •Your email provider forwards it to your agent's unique AIChatVault inbox address.
- •The agent reads the email content, retrieves relevant knowledge, and generates a reply.
- •The reply is sent from the reply name and reply email you configured — the customer sees your brand, not AIChatVault.
- •Emails received and replied counts update in the Stats tab so you can monitor volume.
Setting up the email channel
1
Open Deploy → Email
Click Deploy in the sidebar and select the Email tab.
2
Copy your inbox address
Each agent has a unique inbox address shown at the top of the setup tab. It looks like
agent-slug@inbound.aichatvault.com. Copy it.3
Set up forwarding in your email provider
Go to your email provider (Gmail, Outlook, Google Workspace, Zoho, etc.) and create a forwarding rule that sends all incoming messages to your copied inbox address. Most providers call this "email forwarding" or "automatic forwarding".
4
Confirm the forwarding
When you set up forwarding, your email provider usually sends a confirmation email to the forwarding address. The Email Channel will detect this and show a confirmation prompt. Click the confirmation link or enter the confirmation code to activate forwarding.
5
Save your reply settings
Configure the reply name, reply email, and subject prefix (see settings below), then click Save.
Reply settings
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Reply name | The sender name customers see on replies — e.g. "Support Team" or "Aria from Acme". |
| Reply email | The reply-to email address — e.g. support@yourcompany.com. Customers click Reply and this is where their reply goes. |
| Email signature | Optional text appended to the bottom of every reply — e.g. your company name and contact details. |
| Subject prefix | Text prepended to the reply subject line — defaults to "Re:". Change to match your support inbox conventions. |
Business hours
You can restrict the agent to only reply during specified hours. When business hours are enabled, emails received outside those hours receive the outside-hours message instead of an AI-generated reply.
- •Enable business hours — toggle on to activate the schedule.
- •Per-day schedule — set start and end times for each day of the week. Days can be enabled or disabled individually.
- •Outside hours message — the auto-reply sent when an email arrives outside business hours. Example: "Thanks for reaching out! Our team will be in touch during business hours (Mon–Fri 9am–5pm GMT)."
Monitoring email activity
The Stats tab shows:
- •Emails received — total count of emails forwarded to the inbox address.
- •Emails replied — count of emails the agent successfully replied to.
- •Last email at — timestamp of the most recent incoming email.
ℹ️
The agent replies using your knowledge base content. For best results, make sure your knowledge base covers the topics your support emails typically ask about. Add Q&A entries for your most frequent email questions — Q&A answers are retrieved with the highest priority and produce the most precise replies.
⚠️
Do not forward a shared team inbox where multiple people are already replying manually — the agent will reply to every incoming email. Create a dedicated forwarding rule or use a separate support address for the agent channel.
💡
Test the email channel by sending a test email to your support address after forwarding is set up. Check the Stats tab to confirm it was received, and look at the Activity feed in your agent to see the reply that was sent.
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