How Piper handles email replies

Piper the AI SDR agent is designed to handle the initial "hello back" from an inbound lead, acting as a helpful and efficient first responder. Piper sends one smart, personalized reply to a lead's email and then seamlessly hands off the conversation to the right human sales rep to take it forward.

This feature ensures that no lead goes unanswered, improving response times and keeping your pipeline moving.

Configuring Piper Email replies

1. Navigate to Settings → AI → Email Campaigns.
2. Find the campaign you’d like to have Piper handle responses to.
3. Under Sender, select Qualified to ensure the email campaign comes from your AI SDR agent.

4. In the Reply handling section that appears, select whether or not you’d like your AI SDR agent to reply to responses they receive.

• If On is selected, your AI SDR agent will reply automatically, and hand off as detailed below.

• If Off is selected, your AI SDR agent can forward the replies to a designated email address. This email address does not need to be a provisioned Qualified user.

Handoffs

Handoff configuration

Once you activate the automatic replies feature in your campaign settings, your AI SDR agent gets to work. When it’s time, they bring a human rep into the conversation. You can set this up in one of two ways:

• Salesforce Ownership Rules: Designate a rep based on your existing Salesforce ownership rules. You can also add a fallback to a specific Qualified user, in case the Salesforce owner is not found.
• Single Sender: Select a specific rep to handle all replies for that campaign.

When Piper decides not to reply

Piper will not reply to emails that are:

• Automated messages, like an Out of Office reply.
• Simple acknowledgments, such as "Sounds good, I booked a time!" 
• Junk messages or attempts to confuse her.
• Emails that clearly state no further action is needed.

Test Piper's replies with the simulator

You can use the simulator in your email campaign setup to see how Piper will handle inbound email replies. When automatic replies are turned on, you'll see a new Reply option in the simulator.

This tool allows you to:

1. Open the simulator: Access the new "Reply" dialog box.
2. Type a sample response: Enter a sample question or comment from a lead.

3. Preview Piper's reply: See exactly how Piper would handle the conversation in an email, and even edit her response live to fine-tune her communication.

Important things to note

• Reply Speed: Piper checks the inbox for new replies every five minutes. 
• Content Source: Piper's replies are based on the content you've already added to your Agent Studio, including links, PDFs, and text snippets.
• Analytics: You can track Piper's replies within the main campaign tab. We recommend creating a workflow or a report that filters by that specific campaign to monitor sends and replies.