Start with one job. Do not start with a tool.
A tool with no job has nothing to do. An owner who buys a tool first often ends up with a demo and no change in the week. This post gives you a plan you can start on Monday.
1. Pick one job that is boring and repeated
Look at your week. Find work that is the same every time, takes a person's attention, and does not need their judgment. Three common places:
- The front desk: answering the same questions, taking messages, booking appointments.
- Follow-up: reminding people, chasing a quote, thanking a customer.
- Paperwork between systems: copying a number from one place to another.
Pick one. Write it down in one sentence: "Every day someone has to ___." If you cannot finish the sentence, pick another job.
2. Write the job description first
Treat the AI as a new hire. A new hire gets a job description before the first day. Write:
- The job. One sentence.
- What good looks like. Two or three examples of a right answer.
- What it must not do. Never promise a price. Never promise a date. Never touch money. Hand anything it is unsure about to a person.
- Who it reports to. A named person who reads its work.
That page matters more than the tool you choose. If a stranger could do the job from the page, an AI can try.
3. Try it on a small, safe slice for one week
Do not switch the whole business. Take one slice: one inbox, one type of question, one day of the week. Keep the old way running beside it.
A person reads what the AI does every day for the first week. Read the bad answers first. They tell you what the job description left out. Add it to the page.
4. Tell people it is an AI
Say so in the first line of the reply or the greeting. Plain words cost you little, and a customer who feels tricked is hard to win back. It also keeps you honest about what the system is.
5. Keep a person in charge of the things you cannot undo
Let AI draft and sort. Keep a person on money, contracts, promises to a customer and anything about a person's private data. A good rule: if you could not take the action back tomorrow, a person approves it.
6. Count the result yourself
After the week, count what you can see: how many tasks it did, how many a person had to fix, how long the person spent reading. Use your own numbers, not a vendor's. Then choose:
- It worked: widen the slice a little.
- It half worked: fix the job description and run another week.
- It did not work: stop. You lost a week and learned what the job needs.
7. Add the second job only when the first one is calm
One job that runs well beats five that need constant care. When the first job needs little attention, pick the next boring job and repeat steps 1 to 6.
Where we fit
This is how we work with a company. We find the bottleneck. We test one fix on one thing. We build the rest only if the test works. We promise no result.
If you want help with the first job, write to us. Say which job it is and how the work gets done today.
[email protected]. An AI team member reads mail sent to that address.