1. Count active work and elapsed delay separately
Sample recent inquiries, including routine requests and difficult ones. Record active minutes spent reading, checking information, calculating, drafting and making revisions. Do not count the two days spent waiting for a customer as two days of staff labour.
Separately record the elapsed time from inquiry to first useful answer. That is a customer-experience measure. Keep it separate from minutes worked so the same delay does not inflate your cost estimate.
Use representative averages for each request type and multiply by its monthly volume.
2. Work out the current monthly effort
Illustrative example, not customer results. Use one currency throughout; this example uses US dollars. The hourly figure should include the employment costs relevant to your business.
| Input or calculation | Example | Your source |
|---|---|---|
| Completed quotes per month | 60 | Your quote records |
| Active minutes per quote, including revisions | 22 | A timed sample |
| Monthly hours | 60 × 22 ÷ 60 = 22 | Volume × minutes ÷ 60 |
| Assumed hourly staff cost | US$40 | Your own cost estimate |
| Monthly cost of this work | 22 × US$40 = US$880 | Hours × hourly cost |
US$880 is the estimated cost of the existing work. It is not the amount automation will save. Someone may still review replies, handle exceptions and maintain the rules. Freed time is useful capacity; it does not automatically reduce payroll.
3. Review what happened to the inquiries
Classify a sample as quoted, answered without a quote, awaiting customer details, declined, duplicate or genuinely unanswered. Subtracting quotes sent from inquiries received does not tell you how many customers were ignored.
For response delays, inspect the actual conversation and outcome. A customer who stopped replying might have booked elsewhere, postponed or decided against the purchase. Do not multiply every unanswered request by average job value and call it recoverable revenue.
4. Compare the proposed workflow with its full cost
Estimate the time left after setup: reviewing drafts, correcting records, handling exceptions and maintaining rules. Only the difference from today’s workload is potential capacity recovered.
Compare that with:
- The agreed implementation fee: professional setup starts at US$5,000.
- The separate software plan and any applicable usage costs.
- Any scoped integration, migration or ongoing support work.
- Your team’s time supplying information and testing the setup.
Do not assume new sales in the base calculation. If you later measure a conversion improvement, assess the additional contribution after delivery costs, rather than treating revenue as profit. See implementation pricing.
5. Choose the next step your numbers support
If the workload is small and your rules are simple, organizing templates or trying the software yourself may be enough. If repeated inquiries consume substantial time and the rules can be taught, a scoped setup may be worth discussing.
Quote automation is the starting point when pricing takes the time. Email inquiry automation fits conversations that also need policy answers, changes and documents.
Bring your counts and one representative inquiry to a free 30-minute call. You do not need to promise a project to discuss whether the work justifies one.