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A canned response is a saved piece of text with a short code. Type / in the composer, type the code, and the text drops in — where you can edit it before sending. Settings → Canned responses.

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What a canned response is

Insert one by typing / at the start of the composer and picking from the list, or typing the code directly.
The text is inserted, not sent. It lands in the composer for you to edit. That is the whole point — a canned response is a starting draft with the boilerplate already typed, not an auto-reply.

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Canned response, macro, or agent?

Three things get confused constantly. They are not alternatives; they do different jobs. The useful test: if you always send the same words, that is a canned response. If you always do the same things, that is a macro. If you find yourself needing a canned response for something a customer could have been told automatically, that is a knowledge gap and the agent should be answering it.

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Writing ones people actually use

Name the code after the situation, not the content. /refund-approved beats /refund2. You will search this list under pressure. Leave the specifics blank and obvious. Put a marker where the agent has to type — [order number], [date] — so a half-filled response is visibly half-filled rather than quietly wrong. A canned response sent with someone else’s order number in it is worse than no canned response. Keep them short. A long canned response gets sent unedited, and a customer can tell. The best ones are two or three sentences that save the tedious part and leave the human part to you. Do not can an apology. “I’m so sorry for the frustration this has caused” arriving verbatim to a customer who has had it before is worse than saying nothing. Can the facts; write the feeling.

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Keeping them honest

Canned responses rot faster than anything else in the workspace, because they contain your policies at the moment they were written and nothing tells you when a policy changes.
Every time a policy changes, search the canned responses for it. A response still promising a 30-day return window after you moved to 14 is a commitment your team is making in writing, at speed, without noticing — and your customer has it in writing too.
A reasonable habit: review the list quarterly, and delete anything nobody used. An unused canned response is not free — it is one more row somebody has to scroll past while a customer waits.
A canned response you use every day is a candidate for the agent. If your team sends the same paragraph fifty times a week, that is fifty conversations the AI agent could have resolved. Put the content in your Help Center instead of a canned response, and the agent can answer from it — which also keeps one copy correct rather than two.

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Next

Macros

Reusable actions rather than reusable text.

Insert an article

Sending a Help Center article instead of retyping it.

Knowledge and retrieval

Turning a repeated answer into one the agent gives.

Keyboard shortcuts

The rest of the composer.