Switching from Gorgias to Aigento

You can move from Gorgias to Aigento without a gap where nobody answers and
without two helpdesks answering the same customer. Set everything up while
Gorgias is still live, switch over in one short session, then keep Gorgias
read-only for a few weeks.

Before you switch

Nothing in this section changes anything for your customers. Gorgias keeps
receiving and answering their messages while you set Aigento up.

1. Import your history

Invite your team first, under Settings → Team → Invite Member. An
imported ticket is assigned to the same person as in Gorgias when they have
joined Aigento with the same email address.

Then go to Settings → Data → Import from another helpdesk and choose
Gorgias. Enter your Gorgias domain, the Agent email of the Gorgias
user the key belongs to, and an API key (Where do I find this? links
to Gorgias's instructions). Under What to import, choose Everything,
or Only the last … days. If you choose a number of days, also tick Also
import every open ticket, however old it is, so conversations still in
progress come across. Click Check connection, then Start import.

The import only reads from Gorgias. It sends no email, runs no automation, and
starts no AI reply. Imported tickets keep their original dates, status, tags
and assignee, arrive marked as read, and sit in a scope named after Gorgias.
Large histories take hours: you can close the page, a strip at the top of the
dashboard shows how far it has got, and you get an email when it finishes.

Attachments are not copied: the files stay in Gorgias.

2. Verify your sending domain

Go to Settings → Channels → Email and, under Outbound email domains,
click Add custom domain.
Add the DNS records it shows at your DNS provider, then click Check
verification. Once the domain is verified, choose it under From address,
set the local part (for example support), and click Save From address.
Replies then go out from your own address instead of the default Aigento one.

3. Install the Aigento Shopify app

Install Aigento from the Shopify App Store, or go to Settings → Integrations
→ Add Integration and choose Shopify. Agents then see the customer's orders
next to every ticket. The article Connecting your Shopify store covers the
details.

4. Test with your own addresses

Your Aigento address is under Settings → Channels → Email → Support
address. Send a few emails to it from your own addresses, answer them, and try
your macros and automations.

Don't answer real customers from Aigento yet. Until your support address
forwards to Aigento, customers' new emails still arrive in Gorgias, and
Gorgias never sees a reply sent from Aigento, so the same conversation would
be answered in two places. To try replies on imported tickets without emailing
anyone, turn on Sandbox mode under Settings → Channels → Routing & replies →
Message controls: replies are recorded but not sent.

Anything you do to an imported ticket now counts as work done in Aigento: a
reply, a note, or a change of status, assignee or tags. The catch-up import in
the switch-over leaves such a ticket exactly as you left it. Opening a ticket
doesn't count.

The switch-over

This takes one session of about 30 minutes. Pick a quiet time and follow the
steps in order.

1. Forward your support address to Aigento. In your email provider (for
   example Google Workspace or Microsoft 365), point the forwarding for your
   support address at your Aigento support address instead of
   Gorgias. If your provider asks you to confirm the new forwarding address,
   the confirmation email arrives in your Aigento inbox as a ticket. If
   Gorgias reads your mailbox through a Gmail or Outlook connection rather
   than forwarding, add the forwarding now and disconnect that connection in
   the next step.

2. Turn off email in Gorgias. Deactivate your email integration and turn
   off your rules and auto-replies, so Gorgias sends nothing more to your
   customers. Leave the account itself open.

3. Run the import once more. Go to Settings → Data. If it still shows
   your first import, click Start another import. Choose Gorgias, enter
   the same details, and make the same choice under What to import as the
   first time. If you chose a number of days, add the days that have passed
   since, so this run reaches back as far as the first one did. The catch-up
   run:

   • adds the tickets and messages that arrived in Gorgias since the first
     import;
   • brings every imported ticket that nobody has worked on in Aigento up to
     date with Gorgias: its status, so what you closed in Gorgias is closed
     here too, when it was closed, its assignee and its tags;
   • leaves every ticket your team has worked on in Aigento as it is.

   Like the first run, it sends nothing and triggers nothing. When it
   finishes, the dashboard strip, the Data tab and the email report how many
   tickets were new, how many were brought up to date, and how many were left
   as they are because they had been changed in Aigento. You don't need to
   wait for it before the next step.

4. Replace the Gorgias chat. Turn off the Gorgias chat widget and remove it
   from your theme. In Shopify, open Online Store → Themes → Customize → App
   embeds and turn on Aigento chat. In Aigento, your store's row under
   Settings → Channels → Where customers reach you reads Live once a
   storefront page has loaded the chat. For a site that isn't on Shopify, add
   it under Settings → Channels → Add it to your site → Websites, click
   Add to website and paste the Chat snippet where the Gorgias snippet
   was. If you embedded the Gorgias contact form on a page, replace it with
   the same website's Contact form snippet.

5. Answer everything from Aigento. Turn Sandbox mode off if you used
   it. From now on new email and chat arrive in Aigento.

After the switch

Replies to old Gorgias emails arrive in Aigento, on the imported ticket.
When a customer replies to an email they received from Gorgias, their mail
program includes that email's reference. The import brought those references
over with your history, so the reply is added to the imported ticket and
reopens it instead of starting a new one. The catch-up import also fills in
references that an older import didn't record. A customer who writes a fresh
email instead of replying starts a new ticket, as always.

Keep Gorgias read-only for a few weeks. It is where the attachments on
imported messages still live, and where you can check anything that reached
Gorgias directly. When nobody has needed it for a while, cancel your Gorgias
subscription. Aigento deletes the Gorgias API key from its own storage when
each import finishes, and you can revoke the key in Gorgias too.

Moving from Zendesk or Intercom

The same steps work: import your history, switch forwarding, run the import
again, and replace the chat. Two differences for Intercom: assignments aren't
carried over, and Intercom doesn't expose email references, so replies to old
Intercom emails start new tickets.