How Deflection AI handles a ticket

This page follows a ticket from the moment it arrives to the moment it is solved or handed to your team. It covers email and form tickets first, then what is different for messaging.

Which tickets Pluno picks up#

Pluno answers a ticket only when all of these are true:

• The ticket is assigned to Pluno's agent.
• The ticket is not closed.
• The newest message is from the customer.
• No human agent has replied publicly on the ticket.
• Pluno has not already escalated the ticket.
• The ticket is not in a group you excluded under Data Privacy.

It does not matter how the ticket reached Pluno's agent. The auto-assign trigger, manual assignment and your own routing rules all work. Assigning an existing unanswered ticket to Pluno's agent also makes Pluno answer it.

How Pluno decides what to do#

For each ticket, Pluno searches the knowledge of the ticket's knowledge hub, applies your workflows, and then chooses one of three paths.

Reply. Pluno found what it needs for a complete answer.

Ask the customer. Your sources show that your team needs a specific detail before it can help. Pluno asks for it, and escalates only once the customer has answered or has been asked twice without answering.

Escalate. Pluno hands the ticket to your team when:

• It cannot find enough information for a complete answer.
• It would need information about the customer that it has no access to.
• The request needs an action Pluno cannot take, such as booking an appointment or sending a return label.
• The information is ambiguous or contradictory.
• A business decision is needed, such as a refund, a discount or a custom arrangement.

When Pluno finds nothing relevant at all, it escalates straight away instead of asking the customer for more detail first.

What each outcome looks like#

Pluno posts as the agent you chose for it.

Reply#

• Ticket: set to Pending and stays with Pluno.
• Tags added: pluno-involved
• The customer sees: Pluno's reply.
• Your team sees: nothing extra.

Escalation with a reply#

• Ticket: status unchanged, assignee removed.
• Tags added: pluno-involved and pluno-routed-to-team
• The customer sees: a reply saying the request is being handed to the team.
• Your team sees: an internal note with Pluno's summary.

Silent escalation#

• Ticket: status unchanged, assignee removed.
• Tags added: pluno-involved and pluno-routed-to-team
• The customer sees: nothing.
• Your team sees: an internal note with Pluno's summary.

Silent escalation only happens when one of your workflows asks for it.

Auto-reply detected#

• Ticket: set to Pending and stays with Pluno.
• Tags added: pluno-involved and pluno-detected-automated-reply
• The customer sees: nothing.
• Your team sees: an internal note explaining that Pluno did not respond, because the message looks like an auto-reply.

Merged#

• Ticket: merged into the customer's other open ticket.
• Tags added: pluno-merged
• The customer sees: a comment saying the ticket was merged into their other ticket.
• Your team sees: a note on the ticket it was merged into.

Merging only happens if you allow automatic ticket merging.

After Pluno replies#

• The customer replies again. Pluno answers again, with the whole thread in view. If several messages arrive quickly, Pluno sends one reply to the latest.
• A human agent replies publicly. Pluno stops answering that ticket on its own. If Pluno uses a dedicated agent and the ticket is New or Open, Pluno also unassigns itself.
• A human agent adds an internal note. Pluno keeps working, and uses the note as extra context if it has not yet answered the customer's latest message.
• The customer reopens a solved ticket. Pluno answers again, as long as the ticket still meets the conditions above.
• The customer follows up on a closed ticket. Your help desk creates a new ticket, and Pluno treats it as new. It can see the requester's previous tickets as context.

Automatic resolution#

Pluno solves a ticket 72 hours after its last reply when all of these are true:

• The ticket is Pending.
• It was not escalated.
• No human agent replied publicly.
• There has been no visible activity for 72 hours.

When it resolves a ticket, Pluno:

1. Fills any required ticket fields.
2. Sets the status to Solved.
3. Adds the pluno-resolved tag.
4. Posts the internal note Status changed to solved by Pluno after no further activity.

The customer is not sent a message. If a required field can only be filled by an agent, Pluno waits instead of solving the ticket.

The 72 hours are fixed for tickets. For chats, you choose the period yourself. See Set up messaging deflection.

The handoff to your team#

When Pluno escalates a ticket:

• The assignee is removed. The group and status stay as they were, so your existing routing decides who picks it up.
• Your agent gets a summary. Pluno adds an internal note: a short list of bullet points with the customer's problem, what Pluno found, and the next steps if it is confident about them.
• Your team takes the lead. Pluno stops answering on its own. With hybrid mode, it stays involved on escalated issues: it relays updates from engineering to the customer and forwards the customer's questions to the team.

Pluno keeps helping your agent after the handoff. AI Copilot suggests replies in the sidebar, and Escalation Copilot can take the issue to engineering.

If Pluno cannot produce an answer#

Pluno checks every hour for tickets it should have answered. It retries them, and unassigns any ticket it cannot answer so the ticket returns to your queue.

What is different in messaging#

• Pluno answers the chats on channels you enabled. Ticket assignment plays no part.
• Handoffs go to your agents' workspace. On the web widget, Pluno can first collect details such as the customer's email. The full transcript is on the ticket your agent receives.
• Chats are resolved only if you ask for it. With Push resolved chats to Zendesk on, Pluno saves a resolved chat as a solved ticket after the inactivity period you set, which lets your satisfaction survey run.
• If something goes wrong, the customer is told the chat is being handed to the team, and it is.

Attachments#

Pluno reads what customers attach:

• Images (JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP)
• PDFs
• Text, Word, PowerPoint and Excel files
• Text inside ZIP files

Files can be up to 15 MB each. For other file types, Pluno knows your team can open the file after a handoff. Pluno never sends attachments itself.

Languages#

Pluno replies in the language the customer wrote in, and matches their tone and level of formality. It goes by the message, not by the customer's name, email address or locale. Internal notes are written in the language of the ticket.