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A generic “Thanks, we got your message” auto-reply feels robotic. An AI-generated acknowledgement that reflects what the person actually asked about — within 60 seconds — establishes trust while your team prepares a real answer.
Before you start: you’ll need a contact form on your site and your email service configured. See Send Emails.

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The Flow at a Glance

Form submit

Webhook trigger

AI reply

Generate personalized response

Email visitor

Send within 60 seconds

Notify team

Slack ping for human follow-up

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Step 1: Create the Workflow

1

Open Workflows

Go to Workflows > New Workflow. Name it Contact Form → AI Reply.
2

Add a Webhook trigger

Click Add Trigger > Webhook. Copy the generated URL — you’ll wire it to your contact form.

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Step 2: Generate the AI Response

1

Add an AI Generation action

Click + Add Action > AI Generation.
2

Pick a model

Hiveku Max balances quality and cost nicely for short responses. Use Hiveku Mini if you want to cut cost further and the prompt is simple enough.
3

Write the prompt

A visitor named {{trigger.name}} submitted the contact form with this message:
"{{trigger.message}}"

Write a warm, professional acknowledgement email that:
- Confirms we received their message
- Briefly reflects what they asked about
- Sets expectations for a proper response within 24 hours
- Signs off as "The Acme team"
- Stays under 120 words
The reflection step is what makes it feel personal — the AI shows it actually read the message.

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Step 3: Send the Email

1

Add a Send Email action

Click + Add Action > Send Email.
2

Configure the email

  • To: {{trigger.email}}
  • From: support@yoursite.com (must be a verified sender)
  • Subject: We got your message, {{trigger.name}}
  • Body: {{step2.output}} (the AI-generated content from the previous step)

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Step 4: Notify Your Team

Don’t let the AI reply be the only response — it’s an acknowledgement, not a substitute for a human.
1

Add a Slack action

Click + Add Action > Slack Message. Configure the target channel (e.g., #inbound-leads).
2

Compose the notification

{
  "text": "New contact form from {{trigger.name}} ({{trigger.email}}): {{trigger.message}}"
}
See Slack Notifications for richer formatting with Block Kit.

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Step 5: Save and Enable

Click Save, toggle Enabled. Until the toggle is on, nothing fires.

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Step 6: Wire Your Form

How you connect the form to the trigger depends on how it’s built:
Open the form in the content editor. Under Submission Settings, paste the trigger URL into POST to webhook.

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Guardrails for AI-Generated Replies

Keep the AI tone authentic to your brand. Include voice guidelines directly in the prompt, or reference your Brand Guide so all AI output pulls consistent tone.
Do not let AI responses make specific promises — pricing, delivery dates, legal or medical claims, SLA guarantees. Constrain the prompt with instructions like: “If you don’t know specific pricing, say ‘our team will follow up with pricing details’”. Position these as acknowledgements, not definitive answers.

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Cost Expectations

At typical form message lengths (50-200 words in, 80-120 words out):
  • Hiveku Mini: roughly 0.0005−0.0005-0.002 per response
  • Hiveku Max: roughly 0.001−0.001-0.005 per response
For a business processing 1,000 form submissions per month, AI acknowledgements cost 1−1-5.

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Verify It Worked

Submit your own form with a real-sounding message. Confirm:
  1. The AI-generated email arrives in under 60 seconds
  2. The email reflects what you actually wrote (not generic)
  3. The Slack ping lands in the right channel
  4. The email comes from your verified sender, not a default noreply
  5. The reply doesn’t include anything you didn’t authorize (fake pricing, fake dates)

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Troubleshooting

Improve the prompt. Add 2-3 examples of responses you’ve sent in the past (“Here are examples of our brand voice: …”). Specify what not to do (“Don’t use phrases like ‘we value your business’”). Richer prompts produce less bland output.
Add explicit constraints. Example: “If the message asks about pricing, respond with ‘Our team will send pricing details separately — our plans start at $X/month’. Never invent specific prices.” When AI hallucinates, it’s usually because the prompt left room for it.
Use a faster model (Mini over Max), shorten the prompt, and remove unnecessary context. Under 5 seconds is a reasonable target for acknowledgement emails.
Verify your sender domain in email settings (SPF, DKIM, DMARC records must be correct). For new sending addresses, warm them up by sending low volume to engaged recipients first. See Dedicated Email IP for high-volume use.
Check the Runs tab for the failing step. Common causes: invalid recipient email, unverified sender, quota exceeded. The error message in the run log tells you which.

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What’s Next?

Brand Guide

Keep all AI output on-brand with a single source of truth

Slack Notifications

Richer Slack formatting with Block Kit