The problem
An online shop's inbox fills with the same handful of questions: where is my order, how do I return this, it arrived broken, does this come in blue. Opening and sorting each one before replying takes about a minute. At 300 emails a month, that is 5 hours of sorting, and an angry damaged-item email can wait behind a dozen simple ones.
What the AI does
Jev is a decision model that software calls through an API. A Zapier automation sends each new customer email to Jev with a question set in advance: which of your categories it belongs to (delivery query, return, damaged or faulty, pre-sale question, other), plus a yes or no question on whether the customer sounds upset. Jev answers with the category and a probability. Zapier labels the email, and damaged items or upset customers get a priority label. Anything uncertain is left for a person to sort. Replies are still written and sent by a person, using saved replies for each category.
A worked example
A two-person online homeware shop in Norwich gets about 300 customer emails a month. A Zapier automation sends each one to Jev and labels it in Gmail, with damaged items and upset customers marked as priority.
Before
About 5 hours a month opening and sorting emails before replying
After
Emails arrive labeled; about 1 hour a month on the uncertain ones, with complaints answered first
What it's worth
About $80£60€71A$115C$113 a month of time saved, against about $20£15€18A$29C$28 to $29£22€26A$42C$41 for Zapier and a few pence for Jev. Sorting drops from about 5 hours to 1 hour a month, saving 4 hours, which is $80£60€71A$115C$113 if that time is worth $20£15€18A$29C$28 an hour; answering complaints first is the bigger benefit but isn't counted.
How to set it up
- Check that TypeSafe will give you an API key from its console: Jev is in early access.
- List your email categories and write a saved reply for each.
- In Zapier (Pro plan or above, which includes webhooks), trigger on new emails to your customer inbox and send each to Jev's API with your category and upset-customer questions.
- Add steps that apply the matching label, and a priority label for damaged items and upset customers.
- Check the labels daily for the first two weeks and adjust the categories where Jev is often unsure.
What goes wrong
- This is technical setup: someone has to build the Zapier steps that call Jev's API and keep them working.
- Each email uses about 2 Zapier tasks, so 300 emails a month fit the 750-task Pro tier; a busy Christmas can push you into a larger tier.
- Customer emails contain names and addresses, so check TypeSafe's and Zapier's data terms against your UK GDPR duties.
- If the automation stops, emails simply arrive unlabelled, so a quiet inbox label is a sign to check Zapier's task history.