n8n Workflow: Gmail Complaints → Airtable + Claude Draft Replies

Turn Gmail complaints into approved, policy-cited responses—automatically

This n8n workflow monitors your Gmail complaints inbox, logs new cases in Airtable, sends an immediate acknowledgement, drafts a policy-cited reply with Anthropic Claude, and only sends the final response after a reviewer approves or edits it via an email approval form.

What this workflow does

• Runs every minute per new email: When a new message arrives, the workflow triggers and processes each email in its own independent execution.
• Retrieves and filters messages: It pulls the full Gmail message, extracts plain-text fields, and screens out automated/non-complaint mail and messages sent from the monitored inbox address.
• Matches to existing Airtable cases: It searches Airtable for an open case using Gmail thread, quoted reference, or sender address, routing results as skip, follow-up, or new case.
• Handles follow-ups without resending acknowledgements: For follow-ups, it writes an Audit entry in Airtable and emails the handler in Gmail without sending a second acknowledgement.
• Classifies complaints and severity: For new messages, it uses Anthropic Claude Haiku to determine whether the email is a complaint and assess severity.
• Drafts a policy-cited reply (with validation): It pulls approved policy documents and example replies from Airtable, drafts the response with Anthropic Claude Opus using inline citation markers, and programmatically validates each marker maps to an approved document (retrying once if needed).
• Reviewer approval before sending: It stores the draft, citations, and unsupported points in Airtable, then sends a Gmail approval email containing an approval/edit form. Only after approval does the final response get sent.

Use cases

• SaaS teams needing consistent, policy-aligned complaint responses
• Operations workflows that require human review before any customer-facing email is finalized
• Automation engineers building Gmail → Airtable case management with LLM-assisted drafting

Technical details

• n8n nodes/integrations: Gmail, Airtable, if, code, no op, switch
• AI providers: Anthropic Claude Haiku (classification/severity) and Anthropic Claude Opus (drafting with citations)