Assistants and automation
The work that is not one document but a sequence: read the request, find the file, draft the reply, update the record, chase the thing that never came back. An assistant does the steps and a person approves the result.
What this is
Some work is not a document arriving. It is a small chain of steps that happens forty times a week. A request comes in, somebody looks up the customer, checks two things, writes a reply that is almost the same as last time, updates a record and sets a reminder to chase whatever is missing. Every step is easy. The chain is what eats the day.
An assistant does the chain and stops where judgement is needed. It drafts, it does not send. It prepares the record, a person confirms it. Everything it did is written to a log you can read, so when it gets something wrong you can see which step went wrong and fix that step, instead of switching the whole thing off and going back to doing it by hand.
We do not build an assistant that acts on its own the first time round. Approvals come out later, one step at a time, once the log shows that step has earned it.
What it does
Five habits, and the fifth is what makes the other four safe to keep.
01
Lives where the work already happens
In the shared mailbox, in Teams or Slack, in the CRM, in the ticket queue. Nobody has to log into a new system to use it.
02
Drafts instead of sends
Replies, offers, summaries, internal notes. A person reads and sends, which is also how it improves: the edits are the feedback.
03
Does the lookups
Pulls the customer, the order, the contract and the last conversation together before anyone asks, so the person starts from a full picture instead of building one.
04
Chases what is missing
The document that never came back, the approval that stalled, the form with three empty fields. Politely, on a schedule, and it stops the moment the thing arrives.
05
Writes down what it did
Every run, every step, every decision, with what went in and what came out. This is what makes it reasonable to give it more to do next month.
What you walk away with
One assistant on real work, and the controls that let you widen or narrow what it may do.
An assistant doing two or three real tasks
Chosen with the team, running on live work, inside the tool they already have open all day.
An approval step you control
What it may do alone and what needs a person, written down and changeable without a developer.
The log, and a cost per run
What it did and what it cost to do it. Automation with an unknown running cost is a surprise waiting for a quarter end.
The code, the deployment and a handover
Yours, with a runbook and a walkthrough for the person who will own it after we leave.
How it runs
Watch a day of the real work
We sit with the person doing it. A written process describes what should happen; a day of watching shows what does.
Pick two steps
The two with the most repetition and the least judgement, not the two that are most interesting to build.
Build with the approval in
It drafts and proposes from the first day it runs. Nothing leaves the building unread by a person.
Loosen it slowly
Once the log shows a step is right nearly every time, that step stops needing a click. One at a time, and only with your agreement.
Who this suits
Sales and service teams
The same lookup, the same reply, the same follow up, several dozen times a week.
HR and recruitment
Screening, scheduling and the endless chasing of documents that nobody enjoys and everybody needs done.
Small teams without an operations person
Ten people doing the work of twenty, and the admin is what gives way first.
What it costs in time
Calendar time. The variable is rarely the software, it is how quickly we get access to the tools the assistant has to touch.
A day of watching, then a shortlist
We follow the real work and come back with the steps worth automating and the ones that are not.
The first two tasks, live
Running on real work with a person approving everything, inside your existing tools.
More tasks, fewer clicks
We add tasks and remove approvals where the log has earned it, then hand the whole thing over.
Related
Describe a day in the job you want help with
Which forty minutes go on the same three steps. That is usually enough for us to say whether an assistant is worth building.
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