Professional services

Inbound enquiries filed, answered, and chased without anyone tracking them

Client enquiries arrive by email, get read into the CRM, and receive a drafted reply. A second workflow watches what happens next and nudges anything that goes quiet.

Trigger
A new client enquiry arrives by email
Run mode
Automatic, with low-confidence replies held as drafts for a human
Built with
n8n · Gemini · HubSpot · Google Sheets · Gmail
Connected to
Gmail · HubSpot · Google Sheets

01 / Problem

What the manual version cost

Before the system existed, this all ran on someone's attention.

  • 01

    Enquiries arrive as ordinary email, so there's no structured record of them until someone makes one.

  • 02

    The same details get retyped into the CRM — contact, deal, follow-up task — three times over for one enquiry.

  • 03

    Replies get written from scratch each time, even though most enquiries fall into a handful of familiar shapes.

  • 04

    Once a reply is sent, nothing tracks whether the client ever came back, so quiet threads are only noticed by accident.

02 / Solution

What we built instead

Each decision below is a deliberate one — the interesting part is usually where the system refuses to guess.

  • 01

    A Gmail trigger picks up the enquiry directly. No forwarding rule and no separate intake form to maintain.

  • 02

    Gemini reads the email and extracts the details the CRM needs, which are merged with the raw message before anything is written.

  • 03

    The CRM side is built in one pass: contact upserted rather than duplicated, deal created, follow-up task attached.

  • 04

    A reply is drafted against the extracted details, then routed on confidence — clear enquiries send immediately, ambiguous ones are saved as a Gmail draft for a human to approve.

  • 05

    Every enquiry is logged to a tracking sheet either way, which is what the second workflow reads from.

  • 06

    A scheduled watcher re-checks open enquiries, searches the inbox for a client reply, and either closes the thread out or drafts and sends a nudge.

Enquiry to filed record and reply

Confidence decides whether the drafted reply sends itself or waits for approval.

  1. Trigger

    Enquiry arrives

    Gmail

  2. AI

    Extract details

    Gemini

  3. Action

    Create contact, deal & task

    HubSpot

  4. AI

    Draft reply

    Gemini

  5. Logic

    Confident enough to send?

  6. yes
    Action

    Send reply

    Gmail

  7. no
    Action

    Hold as draft

    Gmail

Follow-up watcher

Runs on a schedule against the tracking sheet. Checks the inbox before it ever nudges anyone.

  1. Trigger

    Every few minutes

    Schedule

  2. Action

    Load open enquiries

    Google Sheets

  3. Action

    Look for a reply

    Gmail

  4. Logic

    Client replied?

  5. yes
    Action

    Close the thread

    Google Sheets

  6. no
    AI

    Draft nudge

    Gemini

  7. Action

    Send nudge

    Gmail

03 / Result

What the system guarantees

Not projections. These hold because of how the system is built.

  • The CRM reflects every enquiry that arrived, not the ones someone had time to enter.

  • Contacts are upserted rather than appended, so repeat enquirers don't fragment into duplicate records.

  • A reply the system isn't confident about is never sent — it waits as a draft, so the failure mode is a delay rather than a wrong answer to a client.

  • Follow-up is driven by the tracking sheet rather than memory, so a thread going quiet triggers a nudge instead of being forgotten.

  • Replies stop when the client responds, because the watcher checks the inbox before it drafts anything.

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