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Connecting an email mailbox to your shop

2 min read · #chat · #email · #shop

Before you start

  • The mailbox has to be a Google one: Gmail or Google Workspace.
  • You need the password of that mailbox, or somebody who has it next to you. Whichever account you sign in with is the inbox that gets connected.
  • Shop settings is an administrator screen. If you cannot open your shop's Settings, ask somebody who can.

Connecting it

  1. Open your shop → Settings → Customer mailbox.
  2. Press Connect Google mailbox. Google opens in the same window.
  3. Choose the shop's address. If your browser is already signed in to your own Google account, pick Use another account and sign in as the shop's mailbox instead.
  4. Google asks whether aiku may read, send and organise mail in that mailbox. Allow it; without that, mail can neither arrive nor be answered.
  5. You come back to the shop's settings with Mailbox connected and the address shown. Open chat inbox takes you straight there.

Checking it works

Send an email to the shop's address from a private account. Within a minute or two it appears under Waiting in Chat → Customer Inbox, on the email channel. Take it, reply, and check the answer reaches your private mailbox from the shop's address.

What happens to the mail

  • Mail from a customer of the shop opens a conversation on that customer. Mail from an unknown sender opens a guest conversation.
  • The rest of the Gmail thread comes in with it, so the agent reads the whole exchange, including what was answered from Gmail itself.
  • Replies leave from the shop's address, in the customer's thread, with the agent's signature and attachments. Each agent sets their signature on their own profile.
  • Automatic mail - delivery reports, bounces, out-of-office, newsletters - is put aside rather than shown as somebody waiting. Nothing is deleted, in aiku or in Gmail.
  • Report spam on an email conversation blocks that sender for this mailbox.
  • The mailbox keeps working in Gmail as before. Agree with the team that customers are answered from Chat, so two people do not answer the same mail.

Disconnecting

Shop → Settings → Customer mailbox → Disconnect. Mail stops arriving in Chat; nothing already received is lost, and the mailbox itself is untouched. To change to a different address, disconnect and connect again with the new one.

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