Email channel — answer your support inbox

Your agent can answer inbound support email. You forward your support mailbox to a private Kelma address; the agent reads each message and either replies automatically or drafts a reply for you to approve. Everything lands in your Inbox alongside your other channels, and replies go out under your business name.

Two modes

• Auto-reply — the agent answers the sender by email automatically, threaded so it groups into one conversation in their mail client.
• Draft for approval — nothing is sent to the customer. Instead the agent emails you a suggested reply to review and send, so a human is always in the loop.

Pick the mode on the Email tile (Channels tab → Email), set the reply-from name (e.g. "Acme Support") and your real reply-to address (where a customer's reply should land), and save.

Enabling email receiving

Email receiving needs one platform step before the forwarding address appears — this is a one-time setup on the Kelma side, not per agent:

1. An inbound-email domain must be configured on this Kelma instance (a subdomain like inbound.kelma.chat, with its MX records pointed at an inbound-email provider — Resend inbound, Mailgun Routes, SendGrid Inbound Parse, or Cloudflare Email Workers). The provider is told to POST every received message to /api/channels/email.
2. Until that's set up, the Email tile still lets you choose your preferences, but shows "Email receiving isn't switched on for this Kelma instance yet." — that's the signal the domain step is pending.

Once it's live, open the Email tile again: it now shows your agent's private forwarding address (kelma-…@inbound.kelma.chat).

Forwarding your inbox

In your mail host (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, your cPanel, etc.), add a forwarding rule so mail to support@yourco.com is forwarded to the private address shown in the panel. Keep that address secret — it's how mail reaches this agent, and its built-in code is what proves the mail came through your forward.

Send a test email to your support address — in auto-reply mode you get an answer back within a few moments; in draft mode you get the suggested reply to send. The conversation appears in your inbox marked Email.

Good to know

• Replies are sent from Kelma's domain with your business name and your support address as Reply-To, so a customer's reply flows back through the same forward and continues the thread.
• Human takeover works from the inbox — your reply is emailed to the customer.
• Email answers consume the same monthly message tokens as website chats.