How to Set Up Tags & Auto-Tagging in Gorgias

What tags actually control in Gorgias

A tag in Gorgias is a label you attach to a ticket, and its real value is that other parts of the platform can read it. Once a ticket carries a tag, you can filter for it in a View, target it in a Rule, and count it in your analytics. That makes tags the connective tissue between "a ticket came in" and "the right person saw it, in the right queue, with the right context." If you want the conceptual tour before the setup, we cover the whole model in Gorgias tags explained.

Three things are worth knowing before you touch a single setting. First, there are exactly three ways to add a tag: manually on an individual ticket, in bulk across a View, or automatically via a Rule. Second, tags are case-sensitive — Gorgias treats wismo and WISMO as two different tags, which is the single most common way taxonomies rot. Third, only Admins and Lead agents can create, edit, or delete tags; everyone else can apply existing ones but not invent new ones. That permission model is a feature, not a limitation — it's what keeps your taxonomy from sprawling.

Step 1: Design the taxonomy before you create anything

The mistake almost everyone makes is creating tags reactively, one ticket at a time, until the list is unmanageable. Design first. A clean ecommerce taxonomy usually groups into a handful of families:

Pick one casing convention (lowercase-with-hyphens is the most forgiving) and one naming pattern, and write it down. The goal is that any agent can guess the tag name without checking. Resist the urge to tag everything — a tag only earns its place if a View, a Rule, or a report is going to consume it.

Step 2: Create your tags

Tag management lives in one place. Per Gorgias' Create, edit, or delete Tags documentation, you'll work under Settings → Productivity → Tags.

1. Go to Settings → Productivity → Tags. You'll see your existing tags (including any default tags Gorgias ships) listed here.
2. Click Create Tag in the top right corner.
3. Type the tag name — matching the casing convention you chose in Step 1 — and confirm with the checkmark button.
4. To refine it, click the pencil icon beside the tag. Here you can set its name, description, and color, then click Save. The description is easy to skip, but write it — it becomes load-bearing later if you ever move to AI tagging.
5. To remove a tag, use the red trash icon. Note that a tag currently used in a Rule can't be deleted until you modify that Rule first — a small guardrail against breaking your automations.

Only Admins and Lead agents see this menu, so decide upfront who owns the taxonomy.

Step 3: Build an auto-tag Rule by keyword or intent

Manual tagging is fine for edge cases, but the point of a taxonomy is to let a Rule do the work. A Gorgias Rule follows a WHEN / IF / THEN shape — WHEN a trigger fires, IF conditions match, THEN take an action. For tagging, the action you want is Add Tags. If Rules are new to you, the mechanics are covered in Gorgias Rules explained.

Here's a WISMO ("where is my order?") auto-tag Rule, the workhorse of any ecommerce inbox:

1. Open your Rules settings and create a New Rule.
2. Set the WHEN trigger — typically when a ticket is created (or received), so the tag lands the moment the message arrives.
3. Add an IF condition that matches the intent. A keyword-based condition on the message body — contains where is my order, tracking, hasn't arrived, shipping status — catches most WISMO tickets. Gorgias' auto-tag Rule best practices show the same pattern for intents like Cancel order and Urgent order edit.
4. Add the THEN Add Tags action and pick your wismo tag (typing a new name here creates it on the fly, but prefer selecting the one you already designed).
5. Save and activate.

One distinction to keep straight, from the Rule Glossary: Actions: Add Tags appends a tag without touching what's already there, while Reset Tags removes all previous tags first. Use Add Tags for accumulating intent labels; reserve Reset Tags for a deliberate "start clean" moment. And because tags are case-sensitive, point your Rule at the exact tag you created — a stray capital letter will quietly spawn a duplicate.

Step 4: Turn tags into Views your team actually lives in

A tag is only as useful as the View that surfaces it. Once tickets are tagged, create a View filtered by that tag so the right queue assembles itself — a WISMO View for the shipping team, a Returns View for the returns desk, a Negative-sentiment View a lead skims twice a day. The full mechanics are in Gorgias Views explained, but the pattern is simple: filter a View by tag is wismo, and every auto-tagged ticket from Step 3 flows straight into it.

You can also bulk-tag retroactively: tick the checkboxes next to tickets inside a View, click Add Tags, and apply a tag to the whole selection at once — handy for cleaning up a backlog after you introduce a new tag.

The honest limits — and where an AI layer picks up

Gorgias' native tagging is genuinely solid, and for a well-defined taxonomy it's hard to beat: it's deterministic, transparent, and free of extra per-ticket cost. A keyword Rule that tags every message containing "return" will do exactly that, forever, without surprises. Credit where it's due.

But keyword matching has a ceiling, and it's worth naming. A Rule matches strings, not meaning. "Where is my order" gets tagged; "my parcel seems to have vanished into the void" does not, even though it's the same WISMO intent. Multilingual inboxes multiply the problem — every phrasing in every language needs its own keyword list. And a Rule can't read a nuanced or mixed-intent ticket ("I want to return the shirt but keep the subscription") and split it into two accurate tags. You end up maintaining an ever-growing dictionary of phrases, which is its own quiet tax.

Gorgias' own answer to this is AI-powered tagging: its AI Agent can autofill tags and ticket fields across email and chat, reading the conversation and using each tag's description to decide what to apply — which is exactly why we told you to write those descriptions in Step 2. The honest caveats: per Gorgias' docs, this requires an active AI Agent subscription, and Gorgias' AI Agent is billed per automated resolution — a model where a single ticket can carry both a help-desk cost and an AI-resolution cost.

This is the seam where an AI agent layer fits, and it's worth being clear-eyed about the build-versus-buy tradeoff before you reach for one. The broader category of AI agents for customer service exists precisely to do the reasoning-heavy work a keyword Rule can't. Macha is one such layer: it runs on top of the Gorgias you already use as a native connector — it does not replace Gorgias, your tags, your Rules, or your Views. It reads and writes the same tickets your taxonomy already organizes, classifying by intent rather than keyword (so the "vanished into the void" ticket still reads as WISMO), and it can look up an order or subscription status through a custom tool that turns a REST API into something the agent can call — so the tag and the answer arrive together. One important contrast on cost: Macha's credits are consumed per AI action, not per resolution — see the pricing breakdown for how that differs from a per-resolution model.

The clean division of labour: keep Gorgias' tags and Rules as the deterministic backbone for what a ticket is and where it goes, and layer an agent on top for the fuzzy, meaning-heavy classification that string-matching can't reach.

FAQ

Where do I create tags in Gorgias? Go to Settings → Productivity → Tags, then click Create Tag in the top right, enter the name, and confirm with the checkmark. Use the pencil icon to add a description and color. Only Admins and Lead agents can create, edit, or delete tags; other users can apply existing ones.

How do I automatically tag tickets in Gorgias? Build a Rule with a WHEN trigger (e.g. ticket created), an IF condition (e.g. message contains certain keywords), and a THEN Add Tags action pointing at your chosen tag. Gorgias' auto-tag best practices show this for intents like WISMO, order cancellations, and returns.

What's the difference between Add Tags and Reset Tags? Add Tags appends a tag without removing what's already on the ticket. Reset Tags removes all previous tags first. Use Add Tags to accumulate intent labels; use Reset Tags only when you deliberately want a clean slate.

Are Gorgias tags case-sensitive? Yes. Gorgias treats wismo and WISMO as two separate tags, so pick one casing convention and point your Rules at the exact tag you created to avoid silent duplicates.

Can I add AI tagging without replacing Gorgias? Yes. Gorgias' own AI Agent can autofill tags (with an active AI Agent subscription, billed per resolution). Alternatively, an AI agent layer like Macha connects to Gorgias as a native connector and classifies tickets by intent on top of your existing tags, Rules, and Views — Gorgias stays the system of record, and Macha's credits are charged per AI action rather than per resolution.

Ready to tag by meaning instead of maintaining a keyword dictionary? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Gorgias in minutes.