The How to series · Post 11
The reply that never sends itself
For UK owners who like the sound of AI email but not the chaos stories: how drafting with a human approval works, minute by minute and pound by pound.
It's 4pm on a Tuesday and a client wants an answer about next week's visit. The reply takes twenty minutes to write, and it's the fourth one like it this week. Nobody would hire a person to type the same twenty minutes every day, but that is the job the inbox hands out. The loop this post is about is the routine reply: written from scratch, every time, by the most expensive person in the building.
The rule we build by: AI drafts the email, the quote, the update. A person reads it and taps approve. Nothing sends unchecked. That last part is not a bolt-on safety feature; it is the whole design.
People hear "AI handles your email" and picture the chaos version: a reply in the wrong tone, a promise nobody meant to make. Fair. That is what happens when you take the person out. So don't take the person out. Take out the typing. The draft is sitting there when you open it, in your voice, with the right numbers pulled from your own files. You fix what's wrong and press send. Two minutes instead of twenty, and every word still has your name on it.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
Sketch it for one person's routine replies:
- 3 routine replies a day × 12 minutes to write each from scratch = 36 minutes a day
- × 5 days = 3 hours a week at £30 an hour = £90 a week
- × 46 weeks = £4,140 a year of typing.
Approval-first version: the same 3 replies, each reviewed in 2 minutes = 6 minutes a day = half an hour a week = £15 a week, £690 a year. The difference, about £75 a week or £3,450 a year, is what the typing was costing. Swap in your own counts. (A sketch, not a client figure.)
Score it: the three checks
Score the loop, the routine reply, on the three checks:
- Hours. 3 hours a week of routine replies in the sketch (4).
- Repeat. Each reply type fits on one page: the tone, the facts to include, what never to get promised (4).
- Risk-if-wrong. A bad draft is caught at approval and costs two minutes, not a client, because nothing sends unchecked (4).
Three checks at 4 or more, so the verdict is hand over: the drafting goes to software, the sending stays human. Same trade for the quote, the update and the chase.
Try one thing this week (free)
Pick one reply you have already sent this week and save it as a template, with the changing parts as blanks. Next time the same request lands, fill the blanks and send. Time yourself against the twenty minutes. Judge it on Friday: the gap between what you spent and what you usually spend is the size of the loop, measured on your own week for nothing.
Where a person stays
The decision is the part nobody hands over: what we promise, at what price, in what tone. Software prepares the ten minutes before that decision, and a person makes it. Nothing sends unchecked, on our own work included. Financial, compliance and legal replies stay approval-only, always, which means a machine can lay out the numbers and a person signs. If control is the reason you have held off AI, that is the feature, not the catch.
FAQ
The approval step. The draft can only send after a person reads it, so a wrong promise costs an edit instead of an apology. The design assumes the machine will get things wrong sometimes, and puts a person in the one place where wrong is still cheap.
No. An auto-reply is one canned text for everyone, sent unchecked. A draft is written for the specific message that arrived, in your voice, and waits for a person. The difference matters most when the message is not routine, which is exactly when the canned version embarrasses you.
The ones with no right answer: a complaint with real damage in it, a legal position, a price you haven't settled. Those are written by a person from the first word. The test is simple: if two good people would write it differently, it is a judgement call, and judgement calls need a human name on them.
Most clients care about the wait and the accuracy, not the typing. Nothing reaches them unchecked, so nothing reaches them that you wouldn't have written yourself. The reply gets faster.
Nothing this week: the template trick above is free and uses the tools you already use. Measuring which replies are worth drafting properly is part of the £499 diagnostic, which comes with 5 hours found or full refund.