Enquiry follow-up workflow
Stop good customer enquiries disappearing in the inbox
Direct answer
Fast enquiry follow-up does not require an AI agent to own the customer conversation. Treat acknowledgement, interpretation, completeness checks, qualification, booking, pricing and promises as separate decisions. Automate the stable low-consequence steps; keep consequential commitments behind explicit rules or a person.
One “follow-up” contains several different step types.
A neutral “we received your enquiry” acknowledgement is a different risk class from quoting a price or promising availability.
A safe bounded pattern
- New enquiry creates one durable event/record.
- Send one neutral acknowledgement with deduplication.
- Interpret free text into a constrained structure if needed; preserve the original.
- Check minimum required information using deterministic rules.
- Ask one bounded missing-information question where appropriate.
- Stop before unusual scope, price or consequential commitment.
- Human/rule decides the outcome; deterministic action sends the approved response.
What should remain visible
- Who owns the enquiry now.
- What facts are known vs inferred.
- What is missing.
- Which next action is due.
- Whether an exception or promise requires a person.
- Whether a send already happened.
When AI adds value
AI may help classify varied language, extract candidate facts, summarise long context or draft a bounded response. That output remains INFERENCE unless separately verified.
AI automation vs workflow automation →When simpler wins
If a web form, CRM rule, autoresponder, booking rule or required-field configuration solves the stable problem, use it. Do not add an AI layer merely because the workflow contains text.
Use the Least-New-System Ladder →