AI enquiry handling
AI Enquiry Handling: Every Enquiry Answered in Minutes
AI enquiry handling means an AI agent reads every email and web-form enquiry as it arrives, sorts it, asks the customer the right questions and replies within minutes. You end up with enquiries that are answered and ready to quote, instead of a pile waiting for the evening.
Why enquiries slip through
Most small businesses don't lose work because they're bad at the job. They lose it because an enquiry sat in an inbox. A customer who contacts three firms usually goes with the first one that replies properly. If you're on site all day, that first reply often comes at nine at night, or the next morning.
Several inboxes make it worse. One per brand, a web form, a shared info address, and nobody is quite sure who checked what. That's how things slip through the cracks.
What the agent does
Reads and sorts
Every new email and form is read as it lands. The agent works out what the customer wants, which part of the business it belongs to, where they are and how urgent it sounds. Sales pitches and junk are set aside. Real enquiries are labelled and logged.
Qualifies
Instead of a vague "thanks, we'll be in touch", the agent asks the questions you would ask: the size of the job, what's there now, a few photos, a postcode, a good time to visit. Your questions, in your words.
Answers
Simple questions get a straight answer straight away. Do you cover my area? What do you need from me? Anything it can't answer properly goes to a person, with the details already gathered.
Hands over
Once an enquiry has what's needed, it moves to the next step: a quote, a site visit or a call. Nothing is left half-done in someone's inbox.
This is AI email automation at its most useful. Not bulk emails, but every real customer getting a proper reply quickly. It's also AI customer service that covers all your inboxes at once, including the ones nobody remembers to check.
A real example from my own business
From my own business
My trade business has several brands, each with its own inbox. An agent reads and sorts the incoming enquiries across all of them. When a customer asks for a price, it works out which brand and which type of job it is, then asks the qualifying questions we used to ask on the phone.
When the customer replies, the enquiry moves on to quoting. Nothing sits unread over a weekend, and when one of us does pick up the phone, we already know what the job is.
What we need from you
- Access to the inboxes and web forms your enquiries come in through.
- The questions you ask before you can price or book a job, and answers to the questions customers ask most.
- Your rules: which replies the agent can send on its own, and which it should draft for you to check.
- A couple of good replies you've sent before, so it writes the way you do.
Common worries
You decide what it can send alone. A sensible start is for the agent to draft replies for your approval, then send routine ones by itself once you trust it. Every message is logged.
Those go straight to a person. The agent is set up to recognise when it's out of its depth and hand over rather than guess.
It writes in your style, from examples you give it: short, polite and specific, the way a good office manager would reply.
Calls are handled separately. See AI receptionist and call handling.
Stop enquiries waiting in the inbox.
Book a free call. We'll look at where your time goes and whether an agent can take it off you. Pricing follows the call, and there's no obligation.