Watch the job before you automate it

Every job in your business has two versions: the one you think happens, and the one that actually happens.

Automate the first one and AI speeds up the step that was never slow.

Take answering a customer enquiry. In your head, someone gets in touch and you reply. It looks like one step, and an obvious one to hand to AI.

Now sit beside whoever actually does it.

Enquiries arrive by phone, email, Facebook and WhatsApp, and a few get scribbled on a notepad by the till. Plenty are missing the details you need, so someone has to write back and ask. Some depend on a price or a date only you know, so they sit in a pile waiting for you. And when the customer goes quiet, nobody follows up.

Typing the reply was never the slow part. The real time goes on the chasing, the checking and the waiting.

That's where I'd put AI to work. I'd have it ask for every missing detail in the first reply, so nobody has to write back a second time. I'd have it flag any enquiry that has gone three days without a response, so the follow-up happens without anyone having to remember it.

You only see those steps when you watch the job happen, which is why a process mapped from your desk misses them.

So pick one job this week. Sit beside whoever does it for one full run, start to finish. Write down every step you see and how long each one takes.

Then point AI at the slowest step first.