Automation, or Just a Better Form?

Work out which side of the enquiry your problem is on

Almost every business that asks me for automation has one of two problems, and they need opposite solutions.

If enquiries arrive and then get mishandled — retyped into a spreadsheet, lost in a shared inbox, followed up only when someone remembers — that is an automation problem, and connecting the tools will genuinely fix it.

If enquiries are not arriving in the first place, automating what happens to them changes nothing. You will have a very efficient pipeline with very little in it.

Signs it is a form problem, not a workflow problem

Any of these and I would fix the front end first:

• The enquiry form asks for more than four things before someone has decided to commit.
• The next step is different on every page, or buried on a contact page two clicks away.
• The form errors say "invalid input" rather than what to do about it.
• Analytics show people reaching the contact page and leaving without submitting.

Why I say this out loud

Automation is the more expensive and more impressive-sounding project, so there is an obvious incentive not to mention the cheaper option. But building a workflow for enquiries that never arrive wastes your money and produces a system nobody values.

A shorter form and a clear next step is often a few hundred dollars of work. Finding out afterwards that it was the actual problem costs considerably more.

When it is both

Frequently it is. The usual sensible order is to fix the front end first, let enquiries build for a few weeks, then automate what happens to them — by which point you know your real volume and what the records need to contain, which makes the automation better anyway.