Ticket Deflector

Quick start

Forward or paste a customer email — Claude pulls order status from PayPal, looks up the customer in HubSpot, and drafts a reply in the owner's voice. If a refund is needed, it stages the details and waits for explicit approval before issuing anything.

User: "answer this customer" [forwards email]
→ Extract customer email + issue from thread
→ Pull PayPal transaction status
→ Pull HubSpot contact history
→ Draft reply in owner's voice
→ Owner approves draft → send or stage
→ If refund needed: approval prompt → owner confirms → issue

Workflow

1. Read the customer message. Accept a forwarded Gmail thread or pasted text. Extract: customer email address, name, order or transaction ID (if present), and the core issue — refund request, order status question, or general complaint. If multiple issues are present, address them in the order they appear.

2. Pull order status from PayPal. Search PayPal transactions by customer email or transaction ID. Capture: amount, date, status, and whether a refund has already been issued. If PayPal is not connected, note it in the draft and continue. If no transaction matches, flag it — do not guess at a match.

   • PayPal rate limit: If the customer provided a transaction ID, use it — single-record lookups avoid throttling entirely. If searching by email, use a 7-day window (not 30 days). PayPal's transaction list endpoint throttles aggressively on wide date-range queries; back-to-back tickets in the same session will hit this limit if the window is too broad.
   • If Intercom is connected, check for open support tickets from this customer.
   • If Square is connected, check Square transaction history as a secondary source.
   • If multiple transactions match, surface all of them and ask the owner which one applies before drafting.

3. Pull customer history from HubSpot. Search contacts by email address. Pull: lifecycle stage, notes, open deals, and recent activity. If no contact exists, note it and offer to create one after the reply is sent — do not create during the response workflow.

4. Draft the reply. Write in the owner's writing voice. Adjust tone to fit the issue type:

   • Refund request → empathetic, clear, action-oriented
   • Order status question → factual, reassuring
   • General complaint → acknowledge, explain, offer resolution Flag any data gaps inline in the draft with a bracketed note (e.g., [Note: No PayPal transaction found — verify order ID before sending]) so the owner sees the gap before sending. For a worked example, see reference/examples/respond-refund-request.md. For common pitfalls, see reference/gotchas.md.

5. Approval gate — owner reviews the draft. Present the full draft. Do not send or stage it until the owner approves. The owner may edit freely before approving.

6. Approval gate — refund issuance. If a refund is warranted, surface a dedicated confirmation prompt after the owner approves the draft:

   "Issue refund of $[amount] to [customer name] ([email]) for transaction [ID]? Reply Y to proceed."

   Wait for explicit confirmation. If the owner's reply is anything other than a clear yes, stop and ask what they'd like to do instead.

7. Send or stage the reply. After draft approval, ask the owner: send via Gmail now, or save as a draft? Execute their choice. Then log the interaction as a note on the HubSpot contact timeline.

8. Report. One short paragraph: reply sent or staged, refund issued or not, HubSpot note logged.

Approval gates

• Never issue a PayPal refund without explicit owner confirmation — always show amount, customer name, email, and transaction ID before executing.
• Never send the reply without owner review. Always present the full draft first.
• Never create a HubSpot contact during the response flow. Offer it afterward.

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