Local guides · Post 15
The same three questions in an Aberystwyth firm's inbox
For small professional firms across Ceredigion: the same handful of client questions retyped every week, and what that habit quietly takes off the day.
The enquiry lands on a Tuesday. A client in Lampeter wants to know how long the work takes, what it will cost, and what they need to send over first. Someone opens a blank email and writes the answer out again, from memory, in a hurry.
By Thursday the same question has arrived from Aberaeron, in different words. Then one from Cardigan. Then one from Aberystwyth. None of them gets a worse answer for being a repeat, but each one is typed from scratch, because the good wording lives in one person's head and that person is already busy.
That is the loop: the repeated client question. It never looks like a job on its own, which is why it goes unmeasured and unpaid. The firm is not short of an answer. It is short of a place to keep it.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
Say a firm answers twelve routine questions a week and each reply takes six minutes to read, think through and write. Both numbers are assumptions, not measured figures. If you want the real number, log a week with the free time leak tracker at tishka.ai/tracker.
- 12 questions a week × 6 minutes each = 72 minutes
- 72 minutes = about 1.2 hours a week
- 1.2 hours × £45 an hour (assumed rate) = £54 a week
- £54 × 46 working weeks = £2,484 a year
Put a written answers page behind it and software can draft the reply from settled wording. A person still reads it, chooses the version that fits, and sends. The retyping is what goes. The judgement stays.
Score it: the three checks
- Hours. Around an hour a week, split into six-minute slices that never reach a timesheet. That clears the bar for most firms.
- Repeat. The questions repeat and so do the answers. If a new starter could handle them from one written page, the pattern is clear enough to draft.
- Risk-if-wrong. A wrong figure on a fee or a date can cost a client real money and cost the firm the relationship. That is what decides the checker.
Try one thing this week (free)
Write down the three questions you answer most often, in the words you would actually send. Keep them in one document your team can open. On Friday, count how many replies that week could have started from that page instead of a blank email.
Where a person stays
The software holds the settled answers and drafts a reply when a matching question arrives, but it never sends. A named person reads the draft, adjusts the wording to fit the client in front of them, and decides whether it goes, waits or becomes a call. Financial, compliance and legal work stays approval-only, always. When a question does not match anything settled, it goes to a person with no draft at all.
FAQ
Your team does, in one short sitting. We turn what you already say into a single page, and you correct it until it sounds like you. Changing it later is a matter of editing a line.
You update the one page and the drafts change with it. Nothing keeps quoting an old position.
No. Both work from the same page, and each draft shows who approved it. The client still gets one voice.
No. If a question does not match a settled answer, it reaches a person with nothing attached.
The £499 diagnostic. One fixed fee: a one-hour call, a written report, and a 30-minute follow-up that ranks what to build first. 5 hours a week found or a full refund, and the fee credits in full against any build.