What is a macro?
A macro is a saved reply inserted into a conversation with one click, usually with fields that fill themselves in, such as the customer’s name or the order number. It exists so nobody rewrites from scratch what has already been answered many times.
Also: canned response · saved reply · reply template
Why it matters
What it means for a SaaS
It is the oldest automation in support and still one of the most profitable, because it requires no new tool. It is also the best indicator of what to automate next: a team’s five most-used macros are the list of the five questions an AI agent could resolve.
Macro in detail
Where it becomes a problem
When the macro is sent without adapting it and the customer notices. A generic reply to a specific question reads as contempt, and it usually produces a second message angrier than the first.
Macro and AI agent
A macro is a fixed template a person picks; an agent writes the reply and, if needed, looks up the account data. Macros stay useful for what always has to be said the same way, like the conditions of a refund.
Maintaining them
Macros age exactly like articles and nobody reviews them, because they are not published anywhere visible. A macro with an old price keeps going out for months.
Frequently asked questions
Are a macro and a template the same thing?
Yes, the name changes by tool. Some call a macro the one that also runs actions (changing status, assigning an owner) and a template the one that only inserts text.
Does an AI agent replace macros?
The ones that answer questions, yes. The ones holding text that must always be said exactly the same way, such as legal conditions, no: there what you want is a fixed template.
Related terms
These usually come up in the same conversation.
Knowledge base
A knowledge base is the organized set of articles documenting how a product works and how to resolve what gets asked often. It serves two audiences at once: customers looking up the answer themselves, and the team using it as the source for their replies.
Help desk — Help desk
A help desk is the team and the tool that receive user questions and resolve them. It centralizes in one place whatever arrives by email, chat or form, turns each question into a ticket with a status and an owner, and keeps the history of what was answered.
AI agent
An AI agent is a system that, beyond generating text, reads data and takes actions to finish a task. In support that means it checks the state of the customer’s account before answering, and when the answer involves doing something, it does it instead of explaining how.
Shared inbox
A shared inbox is a mailbox the whole team can access, where every conversation has an assigned owner, a status and a history visible to everyone. It replaces forwarding emails between colleagues and the generic address one person quietly runs.
Support queue
A queue is a set of conversations waiting to be handled by one specific group of people. Splitting the inbox into several queues (by channel, language, product or customer type) is the usual way of dividing the work once a single list stops working.
Routing
Routing is the set of rules deciding which queue or which person each incoming conversation goes to: by detected language, by customer plan, by words in the message or by team workload. It replaces somebody distributing by hand.
