Free: check your lead follow-up process
Walk through eight questions about what happens after someone contacts your business. Your answers stay in your browser while this page is open. No email address is required, and the checklist does not submit anything to me.
Open the interactive checklist ↗
Try a sample lead workflow
See a customer acknowledgment, a lead tracker entry, and an owner notification appear together. The simulation runs in your browser and sends no messages.
What should you automate first?
Choose a task that repeats, has clear rules, and is easy to check. Moving an inquiry into a tracker or sending an approved receipt confirmation is usually a simpler starting point than asking AI to make pricing or service decisions.
Write the task in one sentence: “When this form is submitted, put these fields in this tracker and notify this person.” If you cannot describe the task clearly, map the manual process before selecting software.
Three questions to answer before buying a tool
- What is the actual bottleneck? A slow response may be caused by unclear ownership rather than a missing AI assistant.
- What information is necessary? Collect enough detail for a useful next step, without asking for information you do not need.
- Who handles the exception? Someone should know what to do when a request does not fit the standard path.
Do you need AI or straightforward automation?
A fixed confirmation message, a calendar link, or a tracker update can often run with ordinary rules. AI can be useful for interpreting or summarizing varied text, but it adds another output to check. Start from the task, then decide whether that flexibility is useful.
Read about the service that fits your problem
- Lead follow-up: organize inquiries and assign a clear next action.
- Websites: explain your services and create an understandable contact route.
- Booking workflows: reduce repetitive scheduling messages and clarify appointment steps.
Bring this to your first conversation
You do not need a long brief. Bring one example of a recent inquiry, the steps your team took, the tools involved, and the part that felt repetitive or confusing. Remove private customer information before sharing an example.
Then ask for a proposed workflow and a way to test it. A manageable first project should be specific enough that both you and the person building it can recognize when it works. Read the project process for a scope checklist.