A quote request lands in the office inbox. Two salespeople can see it. Sometimes nobody picks it up, because each of them thinks someone else already did.
That was the setup at a metalworking shop we worked with in 2025. Every request sent to the office address waited until someone read it, passed it on and checked whether a salesperson had replied. About one in three had a photo of a drawing attached.
Every handoff cost a day
Each handoff meant a day of delay, and on average the first reply took about two working days.
A buyer usually sends the same request to several suppliers. Then the buyer starts talking to whoever sends a quote back first.
Five fields are enough
The shop already had a site with a form on it, so we didn't build a new one. The whole deployment took two weeks.
The form now asks for five things:
- Material and grade, for example S355 or aluminium 6082.
- Quantity in pieces and the batch size.
- Delivery date.
- The drawing as PDF, DXF or STEP, or a phone photo of a sketch instead.
- First name, phone number and email of the person ordering.
Requests often come from the workshop manager, sent from a phone, so the form opens the camera or the gallery and the buttons are big. After sending, the buyer gets a confirmation email with the name of the salesperson who has the request.
What happens in the first minute
The request reaches the right salesperson within a minute. Behind the form sits an automation, built in n8n or in custom code, and it runs five steps in order.
It starts by reading the topic of the request and the size of the buyer's company. The salesperson is picked by topic, for example machining and welding to one person and structures to the other. A request with a deadline shorter than 14 days also goes out by SMS.
The request then becomes a card with the file attached, in a CRM such as HubSpot or Pipedrive, or a row in a spreadsheet when there is no CRM. The buyer gets a first reply from a template, signed with the salesperson's first name.
If 24 hours pass and nobody has called or replied, the rule reminds the salesperson and the sales manager.
Week one: the bike shelter
The first version sent every request with the word "konstrukcja" (Polish for structure) to one salesperson. One of those requests came from a primary school and was for a bike shelter.
I fixed the rule after three mistakes like that, by adding a list of words that take priority.
August: the reminder that looked like spam
In August a request came in while its salesperson was on leave. The rule didn't know about the leave. The 24 hour reminder went out.
The sales manager read the request a week later. He had taken that week's reminders for spam from the new automation.
Now a substitute gets entered in the spreadsheet the rule reads to decide who takes requests.
Fridays, moved to Monday
After about a month the older of the two salespeople asked for one change. Reminders due on Friday afternoon should arrive on Monday morning, because he won't reply over the weekend anyway.
That change took fifteen minutes. Nobody else asked to switch the reminders off.
One quarter later
| Quarter before | Quarter after | |
|---|---|---|
| Quote requests | 41 | 38 |
| Average first reply | about 2 working days | about 6 working hours |
| Requests with no reply | 3 | 1 |
We counted the three unanswered requests from before by going through the office mailbox. The reply time after launch comes from the automation log and the CRM cards, and the one request left without a reply is the August one.
What it didn't do
The first row of that table is the one that did not improve. The automation does not bring in new buyers.
Requests sent as plain email need more work. The automation can also read a chosen mailbox, and an email with an attachment then gets the same card and reminder as a form request. The rule is harder to set up there, because an email has no fields.
How long does a request sent through your own contact form wait before a person answers it? Or tell me about the worst routing rule you've shipped.
Top comments (0)