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Email Support Agent w/ Gemini & GPT fallback using Gmail + Google Sheets

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Created by: David Olusola || dae221

David Olusola

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Last update 4 days ago

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📧 Master Your First AI Email Agent with Smart Fallback!

Welcome to your hands-on guide for building a resilient, intelligent email support system in n8n! This workflow is specifically designed as an educational tool to help you understand advanced AI automation concepts in a practical, easy-to-follow way.


🚀 What You'll Learn & Build:

This powerful template enables you to create an automated email support agent that:

  • Monitors Gmail for new customer inquiries in real-time.
  • Processes requests using a primary AI model (Google Gemini) for efficiency.
  • Intelligently falls back to a secondary AI model (OpenAI GPT) if the primary model fails or for more complex queries, ensuring robust reliability.
  • Generates personalized and helpful replies automatically.
  • Logs every interaction meticulously to a Google Sheet for easy tracking and analysis.

💡 Why a Fallback Model is Game-Changing (and Why You Should Learn It):

  • Unmatched Reliability (99.9% Uptime): If one AI service experiences an outage or rate limits, your automation seamlessly switches to another, ensuring no customer email goes unanswered.
  • Cost Optimization: Leverage more affordable models (like Gemini) for standard queries, reserving premium models (like GPT) only when truly needed, significantly reducing your API costs.
  • Superior Quality Assurance: Get the best of both worlds – the speed of cost-effective models combined with the accuracy of more powerful ones for complex scenarios.
  • Real-World Application: This isn't just theory; it's a critical pattern for building resilient, production-ready AI systems.

🎓 Perfect for Beginners & Aspiring Automators:

  • Simple Setup: With drag-and-drop design and pre-built integrations, you can get this workflow running with minimal configuration. Just add your API keys!
  • Clear Educational Value: Learn core concepts like AI model orchestration strategies, customer service automation best practices, and multi-model AI implementation patterns.
  • Immediate Results: See your AI agent in action, responding to emails and logging data within minutes of setup.

🛠️ Getting Started Checklist:

To use this workflow, you'll need:

  • A Gmail account with API access enabled.
  • A Google Sheets document created for logging.
  • A Gemini API key (your primary AI model).
  • An OpenAI API key (your fallback AI model).
  • An n8n instance (cloud or desktop).

Embark on your journey to building intelligent, resilient automation systems today!