From web form enquiry to personalised reply in under 90 seconds
Most service businesses respond to leads the same way: someone checks the inbox in the morning, finds an overnight enquiry, and calls the customer back. By then, 12 hours have passed, the customer has heard from 2 other businesses, and the job may already be booked.
The system described below closes that gap. A new enquiry arrives, a personalised reply goes out in under 90 seconds, and the owner receives all the lead details in the same moment, regardless of the time or what they are doing.
The system
Every enquiry goes through the same 5 steps, and all 5 happen automatically.
A customer fills in a web form, sends a message, or calls and triggers a missed call response. The system captures the details immediately.
The customer's name, contact number, and the information they submitted (job type, date, suburb, any notes) are saved to a central record. Nothing is lost and nothing needs to be manually entered.
Within 90 seconds, the customer receives an SMS and email that references the specific details they submitted. It reads like a person took the time to write it, because the message is built from their own information, not a generic template.
At the same moment, the owner or the relevant team member receives a notification with the customer's name, contact details, and a summary of what they need. The follow-up call starts with context, not cold.
If the customer does not reply or book, a timed follow-up sequence runs over the next 7 days: a check-in at 24 hours, a nudge at 3 days, and a closing message at 7 days. Each one sounds personal and references the original enquiry.
A live example
A removals business in Adelaide was losing leads to overnight enquiries. Customers would fill in a quote form after business hours, and by the time the owner saw the enquiry the next morning, the customer had often already booked someone else.
The system built for them does the following: a customer fills in the web form at any hour and within 90 seconds they receive a personalised SMS and email referencing their move date, their suburb, and the details they submitted. The owner receives an alert with the customer's name, contact number, and move details at the same moment.
The result: zero missed leads, with the business responding to every enquiry in under 90 seconds, including enquiries that arrive at 11pm on a Friday. The owner did not change how they run the business and did not hire extra staff.
What I build for
This system fits service businesses with 10 to 50 staff where jobs come through enquiries and quotes: removalists, plumbers, electricians, solar installers, and boutique real estate agencies. The owner is usually the person chasing leads between jobs, and because the business is quote-driven, the gap between an enquiry landing and a reply going out is where jobs are actually won or lost.
It is not built for high-volume, low-touch sales where a generic auto-responder already does the job. It is built for owner-operators where every lead is worth following up properly, because each job is worth too much to lose to a slow reply, and there is no receptionist sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring.
Most builds take 2 to 4 weeks from the first conversation to a live system. Setup typically runs $3,000 to $10,000 AUD depending on scope, with an ongoing cost of $600 to $2,000 a month to keep it running. The scope is built around what is actually breaking in the business, not a fixed package.