Example business (fictional): a 6-person remodeling company. The owner writes every estimate and customer email. Tools already paid for: Google Workspace and ChatGPT Plus. Biggest complaints: evenings spent on email, and scope disputes after jobs start.
1. The top 3 workflows, ranked
Every number below is an estimate built from what the owner told us. The assumptions are shown so you can check them. Your plan uses your numbers.
| # | Workflow | Today (owner's estimate) | After | Est. hours saved per week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Customer update emails | 25 a week, 9 min each to write (3.75 h) | Draft from job notes, owner checks 3 min each (1.25 h) | About 2.5 h |
| 2 | Overdue invoice follow-ups | 6 a week, 15 min each to look up and write (1.5 h) | Three saved templates, 4 min each to fill and check (0.4 h) | About 1.1 h |
| 3 | Gap check before an estimate goes out | Not done today (0 h) | 5 min per estimate, 8 a week (0.67 h) | Adds about 0.7 h. Kept because missed scope is the costliest problem the owner named |
Net estimate: about 2.9 hours a week. Workflow 3 costs time on purpose. Its value is fewer scope disputes, which we measure by counting change requests caused by missed scope over the next 30 days, not by hours.
2. Workflow 1 in detail: customer update emails
Before. The owner rewrites each update from memory at night: what happened, the next date, what the customer needs to do.
After. The crew lead texts two lines of job notes. The owner pastes them into ChatGPT with the saved prompt below, reads the draft, fixes it and sends it from Gmail.
Write a customer update of 4 sentences or fewer from my notes. Say what happened, the next date, and anything the customer must do. Use only facts in my notes. If a price, date or name isn't in my notes, write [ASK] instead. No apologies, no filler.
Check step (a person does this every time). Every date and dollar amount in the draft appears in the notes. Any [ASK] is filled in or removed. The owner sends it. AI never sends.
Assumptions. 25 updates a week is the owner's count for a busy month. 9 minutes is the owner's guess for writing one by hand. 3 minutes to check is our estimate, and we time it during setup.
3. What not to use AI for yet
- Pricing. The owner sets every number. AI only checks what is missing.
- Sending anything automatically. Every draft is read by a person first.
- Customer payment or banking details in a personal AI account. Leave them out of what you paste.
4. If you want it built
A fixed-price quote for Setup: the three workflows above, saved prompts and one-page checklists, two training sessions, and a 30-day check-in. Booking within 30 days credits the assessment fee.