Recipe — Send a follow-up three days after Done
Three days after a conversation is marked Done, send the caller a short Anything else? template. Catches lingering follow-ups before they become a new conversation, and signals that the team is paying attention.
This pairs well with — but is separate from — the CSAT survey recipe. The CSAT goes out three hours after Done; this follow-up goes out three days after Done. Different templates, different intents.
What this rule does
- Trigger: A conversation’s status changes to Done.
- Wait: 3 days (72 hours).
- Action: Send the Anything Else? Email Studio template (only for email conversations — other channels handled separately).
- Throttle: 1 per contact per 30 days, so an active customer doesn’t get a follow-up after every interaction.
Before you start
- An Anything Else? template in Email Studio, with translations for every language your team handles
- A throttle plan that fits your team’s contact volume — 30 days for low-volume relationships, shorter for high-volume
Build it
Go to Settings → Automation rules, click Add rule, then Build it by hand instead.
- When — A conversation’s status changes
- Only if — Match all of these: Previous conversation status is not Done, New conversation status is Done, Channel is Email
- Then — 1. Wait — 3 days
2. Send email template → Anything Else?, language Match the customer - More options — Limit how often it runs: at most 1 every 43200 minutes (30 days), Per customer
Test on recent conversations cannot replay this rule, because its conditions check what changed in the event. Check Run history after the first runs.
The first condition prevents the rule from refiring if a Done conversation gets reopened and re-Done’d in quick succession (a common pattern when an agent toggles status while clarifying).
Why three days
- Three hours is too soon. That’s CSAT territory — the customer is still mentally on the case.
- Three days is the sweet spot. Most of the time the case is genuinely resolved by then. If anything was missed, the customer notices around now and has a chance to reply to your nudge rather than start fresh.
- A week is too late. If the issue lingered, the customer has already opened a new case, and your follow-up arrives confusingly out of order.
Variants
- Channel-specific waits. Email tolerates three days; chat usually shouldn’t get a delayed follow-up at all (chat is synchronous, follow-ups feel intrusive). Remove the Channel condition and use branches by channel.
- Skip if reopened. Add a condition Conversation status is Done checked after the wait — the wait persists state, and if the customer replied during those three days the conversation is now back in Active. This guards against following up on a case that’s no longer Done.
- Customer tier scoped. Send the follow-up only to VIPs (Customer tier is VIP) — proactive touchpoints scale poorly across the long tail.
Verify it worked
Resolve a test conversation to Done. Check Manual Executions: the Wait action should appear immediately and show “in progress” until the 72-hour mark. Three days later, the Send template action should fire and the customer should receive the follow-up email.
Troubleshooting
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Symptom: Follow-up sends even though the customer already replied during the 72-hour wait. Fix: Add a re-evaluation condition after the wait — see “Skip if reopened” variant above.
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Symptom: Follow-up sends in English when the conversation was in another language. Fix: Confirm the template has a translation for that language. Otherwise it falls back to English.
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Symptom: Same customer gets multiple follow-ups within a week. Fix: Counted is set to Per conversation rather than Per customer. Change it to Per customer.