Support Macro Studio

Goal

Turn your best resolved tickets into a small set of guarded macros: when to use each one, the exact reply, what the agent must check first, and when to stop and escalate.

Tools required

Direct is the vendor's public site. Affiliate appears only when ShipPlays is enrolled in that program.

• Gorgias

  Direct

  Export and the macro home if you are on it. Zendesk, Intercom, or Help Scout are the same job.

• A spreadsheet

  Direct

  The catalog. One row per macro, including the escalation line. The help desk is where agents click. The sheet is where you decide.

• Claude

  Direct

  Cluster tickets you paste and draft replies. A business account with terms you have read.

Step-by-step setup

1. Write the escalation rules before you touch a model

   Five bullets is enough. Examples: refund above a number you choose, any safety or injury note, any mention of a lawyer or a regulator, any account the customer says was accessed by someone else, any ticket where the customer is on their third reply about the same failure. If you do not have a policy, the macro will invent one. That is the failure mode.

2. Export 50 to 80 tickets a senior would sign

   Recently solved, and good. Strip names, emails, order numbers, addresses, and anything you would not read aloud. Keep the issue and the reply that fixed it. Do not export your worst tags and hope clustering cleans them up.

3. Cluster into at most 12 groups

   Paste the stripped tickets into the clustering prompt. You want a catalog a new hire can remember, not 60 variants of an apology. Drop clusters that show up once. Heroic one-off saves do not become macros.

4. Draft each survivor as a macro with an exit

   The macro prompt returns a name, trigger phrases, checks before sending, the reply, promises it must not make, and the escalation condition. You edit the reply into the company's real voice. You delete any refund, date, or admission your policy does not allow. Leave a blank where the agent must look something up, such as the carrier status.

5. Load them as macros, not as an autoresponder

   Agents pick them and send them. For 10 days, tag any ticket where the macro was wrong. A macro that is fast and wrong creates the next ticket.

6. Retire on purpose

   Once a week, run the retirement prompt on macros that were tagged or that reopened. Kill or rewrite the ones that caused a second contact. A smaller catalog is the goal.

Exact prompts

Cluster these solved support tickets. Do not write customer-facing copy yet.

Escalation rules (these are not macros; they are exits):
{ESCALATION_BULLETS}

Tickets:
{STRIPPED_TICKETS}

Return at most 12 clusters. For each:
- Name
- How many tickets in this paste look like it
- The customer problem in one sentence
- What the successful replies had in common
- Whether this should be a macro, an escalation, or dropped (one-off)

Ignore existing tag names. Cluster from the text. If two clusters are the same problem with different manners, merge them.

Write one support macro. Agents will paste it. It will not auto-send.

Cluster:
{CLUSTER_NOTES}

Two or three good replies from that cluster:
{EXAMPLES}

Escalation rules:
{ESCALATION_BULLETS}

Return:
- Name
- Use when: trigger phrases and situations
- Check first: facts the agent must look up. Use a blank like [carrier status] where the reply needs a live fact.
- Reply: short, in the voice of the examples. No fake empathy paragraph.
- Do not promise: refunds, dates, credits, or causes you cannot see.
- Escalate instead when: tie this to the rules above.
- If the customer is angry about harm, a lawyer, or an account takeover, the reply is the escalation handoff, not a soothing paragraph.

Do not invent an order status.

Decide which macros to keep, fix, or kill.

Catalog:
{MACRO_LIST}

Failures this week (macro name, what the customer said next):
{FAILURES}

For each failure return: keep, rewrite, or kill, plus the specific line that caused the second ticket. Prefer kill over a longer warning. End with the catalog you would actually hand a new hire on Monday. It should be shorter or equal, not longer.

Expected results

• About 8–12 macros, each with an entry check and an exit.
• New hires can answer known issues in the company's voice without inventing policy.
• Escalations happen on purpose, with the case already summarized.
• A weekly list of macros to fix or remove.

Guardrails

• No auto-send in the first version. Agents send.
• No refunds, credits, or exceptions unless the check says a human confirmed eligibility.
• Strip personal data before a ticket reaches a model. Use a vendor account whose data terms you have read.
• Do not let the model invent order, refund, or shipping status. Blanks are filled from the admin.
• If the customer mentions harm, a lawyer, or an account takeover, the macro is escalate, not soothe.

Common mistakes

Related

• Outbound Account Research Sprint
• One-Source Content Engine