Your agents are smart.
Hi, can you tell me what it costs to replace a water heater?
Thanks for reaching out! The cost of replacing a water heater depends on the unit and the installation. Would you like to schedule an appointment? Let me know how I can help!
context used: none
They don't know your business.
Hi, can you tell me what it costs to replace a water heater?
Thanks for writing. One thing we hold to: We never quote a fixed price before a site visit.
So the first step is a visit. Send a photo of the current unit if you can, and reply with two times that suit you.
context used: one house rule, stated before any number
What usually happens.
- A demo in week one. Everyone is impressed.
- A rewrite in week three, because the replies were wrong in ways only your people could see.
- By month two, someone is quietly doing it by hand again.
The model was fine. It was working blind.
What was missing.
Not a better model. The things your best person knows and has never written down: how you quote, what you refuse, who gets called first, what "urgent" means here.
- tacit
- (adjective) understood or implied without being stated. Of knowledge: held by people, absent from documents.
We write it down, in a form an agent can follow. Four stages.
Ask any agent what it can automate.
Great question! For a plumbing business, AI can automate:
- Customer support
- Scheduling
- Invoicing
- Marketing
- And much more!
Let me know if you'd like help getting started.
five headings. zero decisions.
Audit: which of your tasks can an agent actually do?
-
Quote requests
Assist
constraint:
We never quote a fixed price before a site visit.
- Appointment booking Automate fixed rules, low risk, reversible
- Emergency call-outs Human judgement and liability
- Invoice reminders Automate templated, logged
- Supplier price checks Assist needs the current catalogue
five tasks. five verdicts. one of them is yours.
Everything a generic agent knows about you.
You are a helpful assistant.
that is the whole file.
Foundry: your knowledge, written as a skill.
--- name: quote-requests description: How Oakfield Plumbing answers a request for a price. --- # Quote requests ## Rules -We never quote a fixed price before a site visit.- Emergency jobs go to the on-call phone, never to email. - Offer two slots. Never "whenever suits you". ## Steps 1. Reply within the hour, even if only to book the visit. 2. Ask for a photo of the existing unit and the meter. 3. Book the visit. State the rule before any number. ## Check - Did the reply state the rule before any number? - Is the on-call phone in the reply? Remove it.
This is you, written down.
Then every draft goes out. Or none does.
Either nobody checks, or nobody trusts it and a person reads all of it. Both cost you the thing you bought it for.
- Draft 1sent
- Draft 2sent
- Draft 3sent
- Draft 4sent
nothing checked. nothing explained.
Review: the skill knows what it may decide.
The rest waits for a person, with the reason attached. Not a queue of everything. A queue of the one thing that needs you.
- Reply: water heater enquirysent
- Booking: Tuesday 09:30sent
- Reminder: invoice 0231sent
- Price: boiler swap, no visit yetheld for youconflicts with
We never quote a fixed price before a site visit.
three sent. one held. reason attached.
A customer's agent comes looking.
- status
- 200
- offer
- none found
- hours
- unknown
- booking
- none
- contact
- 1 phone number
skipped. the agent moves on.
Readable: it finds a business it can book.
- service
- water heater replacement
- area
- within 25 km of the workshop
- hours
- Mon to Sat, 08:00 to 18:00
- booking
- /book, accepts agent requests
- first step
- site visit
- policy
We never quote a fixed price before a site visit.
compared. booked. without a guess.
Agents that know your business. And that you own.
Audit, Foundry, Review, Readable. In that order, at your pace. You keep the code, the data and the skills.
Book an audit