Example · Customer service
Have you ever had a client chase you twice for a two-minute job?
It sat in the shared inbox behind forty other emails. By the time someone opened it, the client had called twice.
Who is it for?
- Firms whose clients write to one shared inbox.
- Requests that are mostly routine, though each one interrupts someone.
- Clients who explain themselves again at every handoff.
When would we say skip it?
A few requests a day? One person handles that well. Every request needs an expert's judgment? Then a person should read each one. We'll tell you which you have.
Where does it break?
In the queue.
- Request in
- Read
- Understood
- Routed
- Answered
- Closed
- Logged
Requests arrive in waves, just when clients are least patient.
They reach the wrong person, and the clock restarts. Context gets gathered again at each handoff. The quick ones wait behind the hard ones.
In an insurance agency, it's the certificate a contractor needs before noon. In wealth management, it's a distribution request or a change of address. In an accounting practice, it's a client forwarding a tax notice in a panic.
What would we build?
A first-response desk.
It reads each client email on arrival, drafts answers to the routine ones and routes the rest.
What changes?
- Every request is read and sorted the moment it lands.
- Routine requests come with a ready answer to approve.
- The rest reach the right person, with the client's history attached.
- Urgent ones, like a tax notice or a same-day deadline, jump the queue.
What's it worth to you?
Work it out with your own numbers:
- How many client emails does your team handle each week?
- How many are routine?
- How many minutes does each take, start to finish?
- Multiply by your team's hourly cost.
That's what sorting by hand costs you now.
Shared inbox · end of day
143 requests today
- 81answered from drafts a person approved
- 49routed with the client's history attached
- 11waiting on the client
- 2urgent, flagged to their owners before noon
Nothing went to a client without a person sending it.
How does it run, step by step?
Show the full run
When does it run?
As each client email arrives.
What does it read?
Your shared inbox. Your client system, such as Applied Epic, HawkSoft, Redtail or a practice management tool. Your own procedures and templates. We confirm each source in the first conversation.
What are the steps?
- Reads each request and identifies the client.
- Sorts it: routine, needs an expert, or urgent.
- Drafts the answer to routine requests from your procedures.
- Pulls the client's history for everything else.
- Routes it to the right person, with a short summary.
- Logs the request and its outcome on the client record.
Who decides?
Your team. Nothing reaches a client until a person reads and sends it.
What does it never do?
It never answers a coverage, tax or investment question by itself. It never moves money or changes an account.
What would we need from you?
Access to your shared inbox and client system. Your procedures for routine requests. A hundred past requests and their answers.
What usually comes with it?
- A document chase, so the papers clients owe you arrive on time.
- A renewal watch, so unhappy clients are spotted before renewal.
- Client onboarding, so new clients get fast answers from day one.
You become the firm clients call "always on it".
Clients hear back in minutes, and nobody chases you for a two-minute job.
Will yours look like this? Not exactly. The first conversation is where we work out how yours should look.
Want to talk yours through?
A first conversation is free, runs about an hour and needs no access. It's with one of our co-founders.
Who replies? A person, usually within one working day.