01 · Trade Services · Inbox Triage Agent

Losing Jobs From the Bottom of an Inbox

A busy trades business with 20+ unread emails by mid-morning. The owner triaged everything after 7pm, tired, often replying to three-day-old quote requests only to find the customer had already gone elsewhere.

The Situation

A well-regarded local trades business, busy, word-of-mouth driven, fully booked most weeks. The owner had been in the industry for years and ran a tight operation on the tools. Off the tools, though, was a different story.

By mid-morning on any given day, the inbox already had 20+ unread messages. Quote requests. Customers chasing job updates. A supplier confirming a delivery. A complaint. Spam. All of it in one inbox, unsorted, in the order it arrived.

The owner would get to it in the evening, after a full day on site, usually past 7pm. Working through it tired, often missing things, sometimes responding to a three-day-old quote request and wondering why the customer had already gone elsewhere.

What We Built

The Inbox Triage Agent: a single agent sitting silently inside the existing email setup. No new software. No change to how customers contact the business. Every email classified on arrival: New Enquiry, Existing Customer, Supplier/Admin, or Low Priority. New enquiries get an immediate, personalised reply in the owner's voice.

Results

Metric	Before	After
First response	18–36 hrs	Under 4 min
Missed enquiries	4–6/mo	~0
Inbox triage time	45–60 min/day	<10 min/day
Pipeline visibility	None	Full, real-time

"I used to dread opening my emails at night. Now I get a message in the morning that tells me what I need to deal with. I look at it while I'm having a brew. Done."
— Owner, trade business

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