How to auto-triage and tag customer support tickets in Gorgias

Why triage matters

Tickets that land in a single untagged queue force someone to manually sort before the right person can even respond. A billing question shouldn't wait behind a technical bug — and a shipping inquiry shouldn't get lost in a pile of feature requests. Manual triage typically adds 2-5 minutes per ticket and introduces inconsistency — two agents may categorize the same ticket differently.

Auto-tagging on arrival means every ticket is categorized instantly. Teams get their own views, queues load faster, and response times drop. Teams that implement auto-triage typically see a 15-20% reduction in first-response time because agents no longer waste time scanning unrelated tickets.

How it works

Regardless of which tool you use, every approach follows the same three-step pattern:

1. Read the ticket — extract the subject line and message body from incoming tickets.
2. Classify the topic — determine the category (billing, shipping, returns, technical, etc.) using keyword matching or semantic understanding.
3. Apply the tag — write the category tag back to the ticket in Gorgias so it appears in the right team's queue.

The approaches below differ in classification accuracy — Gorgias Rules match keywords (70-80% coverage), n8n adds custom logic, and the Claude Code skill uses Claude to understand intent semantically (90%+ coverage, including multilingual tickets).

Which approach should I use?

• Gorgias Rules (Recommended) — keyword-based Rules auto-apply tags the moment a ticket is created. Best for teams with clear keyword patterns and English-speaking customers. Instant, free, covers 70-80% of tickets.
• n8n — webhook or polling-based workflow with custom classification logic. Best for teams that need multi-step logic or integration with external systems for classification. Free self-hosted or $24/mo on n8n Cloud.
• Claude Code — a guided Claude Code skill that classifies tickets semantically using Claude. Covers 90%+ of tickets including vague, multilingual, and conversational phrasing. Best for high-volume teams or those with diverse customer bases where keyword Rules fall short.

What you'll need

Choose your approach

Select an approach below to see the full step-by-step guide.