Enquiry and inbox triage
A shared inbox gets everything: bookings, complaints, supplier invoices, the form somebody filled in at midnight. An AI agent can read each one as it arrives, answer what your records and approved wording already cover, and route the rest to the right person with a summary. Complaints and requests for personal data go to a named person.
The role in brief
Reads every email in the shared inbox, sorts it by type, answers what your records and approved wording cover, and routes the rest, summarised.
Your shared mailbox and web forms, and wherever the answers are kept: your booking system, practice system or CRM.
The office manager or practice manager. Complaints, requests for personal data and anything outside the approved answers go to a named person with a summary.
Time to first reply, emails answered without a hand-over, and routed emails still waiting.
Whoever has a minute reads the shared inbox
It is usually an office manager, a receptionist or an administrator, between other jobs, and sometimes all three. The info@ address collects booking requests, invoices, sales pitches, forms and now and then a complaint. Each is read, forwarded and answered by hand. When the office is busy the inbox is what waits, and an email three people have read can still be answered by none of them.
The email everyone thought was answered
In a shared mailbox a message one person has opened can look dealt with to everyone else. The customer who asked on Monday chases on Thursday, or does not chase and goes elsewhere, because each person who saw the message assumed it belonged to someone else.
A deadline inside an ordinary email
A request for a copy of someone's personal data needs no particular words, can arrive anywhere in the business, and must usually be answered within one month. In an FCA-regulated firm any expression of dissatisfaction may be a complaint, with eight weeks for the final response. Both look like ordinary mail.
The same questions, answered by hand
Did you get my form? Can you send the invoice again? Is there a place on Thursday? The answers are in a system already, and each reply still takes a person away from the work that only they can do.
What happens to each email, in order
Given the shared inbox, the AI worker reads and sorts each email, sends only the replies you have approved, a list that starts narrow, and drafts or routes the rest. Your people answer anything that needs judgement.
Read and sort
Reads each email and form as it arrives, attachments included, and labels it by type: booking, question, document, invoice, complaint, sales pitch.
Nothing.
Answer
Where your records hold the answer and you have approved the wording, it replies. Otherwise it drafts a reply for the right person to check and send.
Every reply outside the approved answers, and anything that commits you: a price, a date, a refund.
Route
Sends everything else to the person or queue that owns it, with a summary, the customer's record and what has already been said.
Complaints, data requests, anything clinical or regulated, and any call back: always a named person.
Follow through
Keeps a list of what is still open and who holds it, reminds the owner at the interval you set, and tells you what has gone unanswered.
Nothing. It reminds the owner and does not answer for them.
Time to first reply
From an email arriving to the first reply, whether the agent sent it or a person did. Reviewed with you each month.
Answered without a hand-over
The share of emails closed with an approved answer and no work for your team, broken down by type of question.
Routed emails still waiting
How many emails passed to a person have had no reply for longer than the time you set, and who holds each one.
Training and L&D providers
Booking requests, joining instructions and lost certificates answered from the course record. Refunds, group bookings and questions about a result go to the course administrator.
Veterinary practices
Appointment requests, insurance claim forms and requests for a clinical history sorted to the right desk. Repeat prescriptions and anything clinical go to a vet.
Financial advisers and wealth managers
Provider letters, valuations and letters of authority filed by client. Advice requests go to the adviser; anything reading as a complaint to whoever handles complaints.
Questions owners ask
Will it reply to our customers without anyone checking?
Only where you have said it may: questions whose answer is in your records and whose wording you have approved, such as confirming a form arrived or resending a document already issued. Everything else is drafted for a person or routed. You can start with nothing sent unchecked and widen it later.
What happens to complaints and requests for personal data?
The agent never answers them. It is set to recognise them even when the email does not use the word, notes the date received, and passes each to the person you have named. How you respond, and whether it is a complaint at all, is that person's decision.
Does it work with a shared Outlook or Gmail mailbox?
The agent reads the inbox you already have, so nobody changes address. It connects in the way your mailbox's provider allows, settled with you when the role is scoped, and it is proved on your own mailbox before any reply goes out unchecked.
What if it sends an email to the wrong person?
Anything it cannot place goes to one person you name. Each action is logged, so a misrouted email can be traced and the rule corrected. Misroutes are counted and gone through with you, and the list of what it may answer alone only grows when you say so.