Template Email Responses: Macro Reads Subject and Inserts the Right Reply

The Problem: 60 Emails a Day, 5 Patterns

A support agent at a software company handled 60+ customer emails daily. After six months on the job, they had identified that roughly 80% of all tickets fell into one of five categories: billing questions, password resets, feature requests, bug reports, and generic how-do-I questions. Five templates covered the majority of their work, yet they typed (or copy-pasted) each response individually.

The average response time was 45 seconds per email. With 48 emails per day fitting the template patterns, that was 36 minutes of typing the same text. A macro reduced this to 8 seconds per templated response.

Template Files

We created five plain text files in a dedicated Templates folder, one per category. Each file contains the full response body with a placeholder for the customer name at the top.

# templates/billing.txt
Thank you for contacting us about your billing inquiry.

I have reviewed your account and can see the charge in question.
Here is what I found: [review and fill in specifics]

Please let me know if you need any clarification.

Best regards,
Customer Support Team

Macro Logic: Numpad Trigger System

The agent reads the email subject and decides which template applies - this decision remains human. They press a numpad key (1-5) to trigger the corresponding macro branch. Each numpad key is bound to a separate short macro CSV file:

• Numpad 1: open templates/billing.txt, copy all, paste to reply
• Numpad 2: open templates/password.txt, copy all, paste to reply
• Numpad 3: open templates/feature.txt, copy all, paste to reply
• Numpad 4: open templates/bug.txt, copy all, paste to reply
• Numpad 5: open templates/howto.txt, copy all, paste to reply

# macro-billing.csv (triggered by Numpad 1 hotkey)
action_type,button,x,y,delay_ms,comment
script,,,,notepad.exe C:\Templatesilling.txt,Open billing template
wait,,,,800,Wait for Notepad
key,ctrl+a,,,100,Select all text
key,ctrl+c,,,100,Copy template
script,,,,taskkill /f /im notepad.exe,Close Notepad silently
key,alt+tab,,,200,Switch to email client
click,left,800,600,150,Click reply body
key,ctrl+a,,,50,Select existing text
key,ctrl+v,,,100,Paste template

Paste and Position the Cursor

After pasting the template, the macro moves the cursor to the customer name line using Ctrl+Home to go to the top, then positions the cursor for the agent to type the personalized greeting. This keeps the workflow fast: paste, cursor is ready, agent types the name, Tab to adjust any specifics, send.