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What should a small business automate first?

Not the flashiest job. The one that repeats every week, follows the same steps, and costs you something real when it slips.

By Understudy ·

The short answer

Start with a job that happens every week, follows the same steps every time, costs you money or customers when it's missed, and has an obvious "done." For most small businesses that's the follow-up: the missed call, the unanswered enquiry, the quote nobody chased.

The four-question test

Before you hand anything off, to a person or a system, run it through these. If a job fails one, it isn't your first job.

  1. Does it happen at least every week? Rare jobs are cheaper to do by hand. The value comes from repetition.
  2. Are the steps the same every time? If you can write them on an index card, a system can follow them. If every case is different, it needs you.
  3. Does a miss cost something you can name? A lost booking, a late payment, a customer who went elsewhere. "It would be nice" is not a cost.
  4. Can you tell when it's done? "Every caller got a reply within five minutes" is checkable. "Customers feel looked after" is not.

Jobs that usually pass

  • Replying to missed calls and after-hours enquiries. The customer was ready to buy when they called. By the next morning, some of them have booked someone else.
  • Following up on leads and quotes. The second message is where a lot of work is won, and it's the one that gets forgotten on a busy Tuesday.
  • Asking for reviews. Everyone means to. It happens when a system sends the request after every finished job.
  • Chasing unpaid invoices. Polite, on a schedule, and never awkward, because nobody had to decide to send it.
  • Appointment reminders. Same message, different name and time.
  • A weekly numbers email. The report nobody has time to build, arriving in your inbox on Monday without anyone asking.

Jobs you shouldn't automate

  • Pricing and quoting judgement. A system can send the quote. Deciding the number is yours.
  • Complaints and apologies. An upset customer can tell when a machine is handling them, and it makes things worse.
  • Anything you don't do the same way twice yet. Automating a messy process gives you a faster mess. Get it steady by hand first.
  • Anything where a wrong answer is dangerous. Legal, medical or safety advice needs a qualified person. A system can take the details and pass them on, and that's all it should do.

How to pick yours this week

Keep a note on your phone for five working days. Every time you do something for the third time, or forget something you meant to do, write it down. At the end of the week, run the list through the four questions. The item that passes all four and appears most often is your first job.

Then count it before you change anything: how many calls went unanswered, how many quotes never got a second message. Without a before, you can't tell whether the fix worked.

Five questions to ask anyone you hire to automate it

  1. Who notices when it breaks? Automations fail quietly. If the answer is "you'll see", that means a customer will see it first.
  2. Whose accounts does it run on? You should own the phone number, the email sender and the data. Someone else can manage them.
  3. Can I switch it off myself? In one step, without calling anyone.
  4. What does it do when it doesn't know? The right answer is "it hands it to a person." The wrong answer is "it makes its best guess."
  5. Can I watch it work before I pay for more? One job first, proven, then the next.