How AI routing works
Learn how a new customer ticket finds its group, from your routing rules to the AI decision model and its confidence threshold, and when a ticket waits in Needs Triage instead.
When a customer starts a new conversation, ReplyX creates a ticket and has to decide which group handles it. Three things can decide, in this order of strength: a person sorting the ticket by hand, your routing rules, and the AI decision model.
Rules first
Your routing rules always run first. If a rule matches, the ticket goes to that rule's group and the decision model is never asked. Rules are the right tool for anything you can describe exactly, such as "messages that mention a password reset go to Accounts".
The decision model
When no rule matches, and Route new tickets with AI is on in Admin → AI → AI settings, the decision model reads the customer's message and compares it with your groups. It only considers groups that are active and have an AI description, such as "Invoices, charges, payments and refunds". A group without a description is never chosen, so you decide which groups AI can route to.
The model gives each group a confidence from 0 to 1 and picks the most likely one.
The confidence threshold
The ticket goes to the picked group only when the model is confident enough. Confidence needed is 70% (0.70) by default. You can change it under AI settings → Routing.
- 0.70 or more: the ticket goes to that group.
- Below 0.70, or no group fits: the ticket stays ungrouped in Needs Triage, where a person triages it.
A higher threshold sends fewer tickets to the wrong group, and more tickets to Needs Triage.
A manual choice always wins
If someone triages the ticket by hand before the model answers, their choice stands and the model's answer is ignored. The ticket's history records each AI routing decision and how confident it was, so you can check how well your group descriptions work.
Worked example
Two made-up messages with no matching rule, and the active groups Orders & Shipping, Accounts, Technical Support and Billing, each with an AI description:
| Message | Most likely group | Confidence | Against 0.70 | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Export to CSV crashes every time since the update, I've tried twice." | Technical Support | 0.88 | 0.88 ≥ 0.70 | Technical Support |
| "hi, quick question" | Billing | 0.41 | 0.41 < 0.70 | Needs Triage |
The first message clearly describes a technical problem, so the model is confident. The second could be about anything, so it waits for a person.
Once a ticket has a group, its complexity decides which model answers it. See How complexity picks a model. To set up AI routing, see AI Assist.