Four automations for a small business

The challenge

A small business selling paid classes. Inquiries arrived by email and social message and waited for front-desk availability. Payments were tracked by hand against attendance sheets. Several hundred past customers sat in spreadsheets with no automated sweeps for retargeting or promotional campaigns.

The solution

Four automations, built on tools the business already paid for.

1. Lead capture and triage. Slow responses meant prospects booked with a competing studio first. Inquiries are logged automatically into one sheet. An LLM answers routine questions on timetable, pricing and logistics within seconds, and anything needing judgment is drafted and sent to a human for review.

2. Payment reconciliation. Matching bank transactions against attendance sheets by hand took hours a week. A daily job now pulls bank transactions through a banking data connection and matches deposits against class registrations in the existing sheet. Anything it cannot match with confidence goes to an exceptions list for review and cash reconciliation.

3. Inactive client scan. A monthly scan flags anyone with no attendance in 90 days, and a reactivation email is sent to targeted former clients.

4. Registration and class lists. Registration, payment and the class list were unconnected, reconciled by hand weekly. One flow now covers registration, payment and class attribution.

The outcome

Faster response to inquiries captures more prospects. Trial class conversions rose 34% in the first month against the prior month, and inactive clients are retargeted on schedule, with around 10% of lapsed customers recovered.

The class list is correct on the day, and the data underneath it is clean enough that reconciliation and reactivation could be automated. 94% of the payment reconciliation runs without a human, and cash payments are properly accounted for.