What business automation is, in plain words
Think of all the times in a week you copy and paste. Details from a form into an Excel sheet. An order from the online store into an email to the warehouse. A price from the price list into a quote. A "don't forget your appointment tomorrow" to ten different customers. Each of these takes a few minutes. Together they eat up hours, and they are exactly the jobs where mistakes happen.
An automation is a rule like "when A happens, do B". When a form comes in from the website, send a message to the person in charge on Viber. When an order is placed, add it to a Google Sheet and update the customer. We set it up once, we test it, and from then on it runs on its own.
Examples of process automation we build
Below are automations small businesses ask for often. Most are set up in a few days, and many can be combined.
- Contact form to Viber or email: every request from the website reaches your phone in seconds, with name, phone and message, and is saved to a list so nothing gets lost
- Automatic PDF quote: the customer fills in what they need, the system calculates the price from your price list and sends them a ready quote with your logo
- Appointment reminders by SMS or email: one day before, or as many hours before as you like, to cut down on forgotten appointments at hair salons, clinics and repair shops
- Order sync: WooCommerce orders flow into Google Sheets, your warehouse software or your accountant, with no typing
- Weekly or monthly reports: sales, new contacts, bookings, in your inbox every Monday morning
- Supplier XML feeds: automatic price and stock updates in your online store from the supplier's file, with rules for margin and rounding
AI automation: when a rule is not enough
Some jobs can't be solved with "if A then B", because someone has to read something and understand it. That is where AI automation comes in. An AI model can read a customer email and sort it as a complaint, a price question or an appointment request. It can pull the details out of a PDF invoice and put them into a table. It can write a first draft of a reply that you simply check and send.
We use AI where it truly saves time, not so we can say we have AI. Where a mistake is costly, such as prices or customer details, we add a human check before anything goes out. Where a simple script does the job, we prefer the simple script, because it is cheaper and more predictable.
An example from our own work: TopSocial, the SaaS we built, writes and publishes Instagram and Facebook posts with AI. We apply the same logic on a smaller scale to other businesses' processes.
Email and Viber automation for faster customer service
Response speed matters. A customer asking for a quote for a renovation or a legal case usually contacts two or three businesses at the same time. If your form goes to an email you open in the evening, someone else has probably called them before you.
With email and Viber automation, the request reaches your phone the moment it is submitted. The customer immediately gets a polite confirmation email explaining what happens next, and you have all the details in front of you to call them. If nobody replies within a set number of hours, a reminder can go to a colleague.
Automated quotes and documents
For businesses that send many similar quotes, such as cleaning companies, movers, photographers, repair shops and travel agencies, automated quotes are among the automations that make the biggest difference. Together we define the parameters (square meters, distance, hours, options), the prices and the rules, and we create a PDF template with your company details.
The customer gets their quote in a few minutes instead of the next day. You receive a copy and can call them to close the deal. The same approach produces contracts, certificates and delivery notes from a template.
The tools we work with
For most automations we use platforms like n8n, Make or Zapier, which connect hundreds of apps: Gmail, Outlook, Google Sheets, WooCommerce, WordPress, Viber, forms, calendars. We choose the tool based on volume and cost. For a few low-volume scenarios, one of them may be enough on its free plan. For many runs, n8n on your own server usually works out cheaper.
When the need goes beyond what off-the-shelf tools can do, we write our own code: small applications, internal panels, connections to Greek systems such as couriers or myDATA (Greece's tax e-invoicing platform). These are priced as software and start from €600 +VAT.
How we start
The first step is a conversation where you describe a normal week at your business. We usually spot two or three places where time is lost quickly. We suggest where to start, with a clear price and timeline, and we always begin with the automation that will save you the most time. Every scenario comes with a short description of what it does, so you know what is running in your business.
