Answer every inbound enquiry within a minute, day or night

Acknowledge every form submission in under sixty seconds and ask one qualifying question while you sleep.

For anyone whose leads arrive through a form · 9 steps · 7 min

How it works today.

A lead fills your contact form at half past seven on a Tuesday evening. You are cooking dinner. The notification sits in your inbox alongside twenty others, and you see it when you open your laptop at nine the next morning. By then the enquirer has already reached out to two competitors who replied faster, and your careful response lands in a thread that has moved on.

You know speed matters, but you cannot watch the form all day. You have tried setting phone alerts, but they fire during client calls and school pick-up. The manual version is checking your inbox every hour and writing the same 'thanks, tell me more about X' reply over and over, always wondering if you missed the narrow window when someone was genuinely ready to talk.

Before you start.

All of it has to be true, or step one fails in a way that is annoying to debug.

A web form that writes each submission to a spreadsheet, email, CRM, or webhook you can read programmatically.
Access to create a new automation in a builder tool (Make, Zapier, n8n, or similar) and permission to connect it to your form data source.
A business email account the agent can send from, with SMTP credentials or an API token if your mail provider requires it.
A document listing the three or four questions that help you decide whether an enquiry is a fit—budget range, timeline, scope, or similar.

The steps.

Map where form data lands and confirm you can read it in real time
Open your form builder (Typeform, Google Forms, Tally, Webflow, or your CRM's native form). Find the integrations or notifications panel and check whether new submissions write to a Google Sheet, send a webhook, or create a record in your CRM. Test a dummy submission and confirm the data appears within ten seconds. If your form only sends an email notification, you will need to connect your inbox via IMAP or use a service that turns inbound mail into webhook events.
Choose one qualifying question that narrows the next conversation
Look at your last twenty enquiries and identify the single question that would have saved you the most back-and-forth. It might be 'What is your target go-live date?' or 'What is your budget range for this project?' or 'Are you comparing proposals right now, or still researching options?' Write it down exactly as you would ask it in person. This question will go into every auto-reply, so it must make sense no matter what the original enquiry said.
Draft the acknowledgement template with one question and no promises
Write a three-sentence reply: thank them for reaching out, confirm you received their message, and ask your qualifying question. Do not estimate price, timeline, or availability. Do not say 'I will get back to you'—the agent sends this instantly, so phrase it as 'I have your message and will review it properly in the morning' or similar. End with your name and a real email address they can reply to. Save this text; you will paste it into the builder in the next step.
Build the workflow that watches the form and sends the reply
In your builder tool, create a new scenario or zap. Set the trigger to watch your form data source—either 'New row in Google Sheets', 'Webhook received', or 'New record in CRM'. Add a second step that sends an email: the To field pulls from the form's email column, the From field is your business address, the subject line is 'Re: [subject from form]' or 'Your enquiry', and the body is the template you drafted. Test it with a dummy form entry and confirm the email arrives in under a minute. If your mail provider blocks automated sending, you will need to authenticate the builder with an app password or API key.
Add a filter so the agent only replies to new enquiries, not updates
Insert a filter step between the trigger and the send action. Configure it to continue only if a 'replied' column in your sheet is empty, or if a 'status' field in your CRM is 'new'. This prevents the agent sending a second acknowledgement when you later mark the enquiry as contacted. If your data source does not have a status column, add one manually and set the filter to check it. Test by submitting a form, letting the reply send, then marking that row as replied and confirming no second email goes out.
Write a second step that logs the auto-reply timestamp back to your sheet or CRM
After the send-email action, add an update step that writes the current date and time into a 'last contact' or 'auto-reply sent' column in the same row that triggered the workflow. This creates an audit trail and stops you wondering whether the agent actually fired. If you are using a CRM, update the lead record's activity log or a custom field. Run another test submission and confirm the timestamp appears within seconds of the email sending.
Set up a daily digest so you see every new enquiry in one place
Create a second, parallel workflow in the same builder. Trigger it on a schedule—every morning at 8 a.m. works for most people. Pull all rows or records where 'auto-reply sent' is in the last twenty-four hours and 'human reply sent' is still empty. Format them into a plain-text list with name, email, and the answer to your qualifying question if they replied overnight. Send that list to your own inbox as a single email with the subject 'Enquiries needing a real reply'. This becomes your morning checklist and ensures nothing sits unattended for more than a day.
Test the end-to-end flow at an inconvenient hour
Fill out your own form at nine in the evening or on a Saturday. Confirm the acknowledgement arrives in under sixty seconds, that it includes your qualifying question, and that the timestamp writes back to your data source. Reply to the auto-acknowledgement as if you were a lead answering the question, then check your morning digest the next day to confirm that reply appears in the list. If any step fails, check your builder's task history for error messages about authentication, rate limits, or missing fields.
09
Prepare a prompt for the agent to draft a real reply when the lead answers your question
Once a lead replies to the auto-acknowledgement with an answer to your qualifying question, you still write the real proposal or next-steps email yourself. But you can speed that up with a second agent. Write a prompt that takes the lead's original enquiry, their answer to your qualifier, and your service details, then drafts a reply. Paste this prompt into a text-expansion tool or a builder step that triggers when a reply arrives, so you can review and send it in two minutes instead of twenty.
Paste this
```
You are drafting a reply to a sales enquiry. The lead submitted this form: [paste form content]. They replied to our acknowledgement with this answer: [paste their reply]. Our services: [paste your one-page service description or pricing tiers]. Write a 150-word email that acknowledges their answer, confirms whether we are likely a fit based on what they said, and proposes a specific next step—either a calendar link for a call, a question about their timeline, or a polite decline if we cannot help. Use a warm, professional tone. Sign it [your name].
```

What you keep.

Automating the typing does not move the accountability. These stay with a person.

Deciding whether an enquiry is actually a fit after you read the full context, not just the qualifying answer.
Writing any message that includes a price, a timeline, a scope estimate, or a promise about what you will deliver.
Reviewing the morning digest and sending the real follow-up email to every lead who replied to the auto-acknowledgement.
Turning off the agent if you are launching a new service or changing your offer, so the acknowledgement does not reference something you no longer do.

Once it works.

The first run is the demo. These are where the time actually comes back.

Fire it from an event

When a lead replies to the auto-acknowledgement with an answer to your qualifying question, trigger a second agent to draft a full reply using the prompt in step nine, so you only have to review and hit send.

Hand off to another agent

If your CRM supports it, have the workflow assign the new lead to a specific salesperson based on region, product line, or deal size, so the morning digest goes to the right person instead of a shared inbox.

Run it on a loop

After three days with no reply to the auto-acknowledgement, send a second automated message asking if they still need help, then mark the lead as cold if there is still no response after another four days.

Scale it wider

Once you trust the workflow, connect it to every form on your site—contact, demo request, partnership enquiry—and customize the qualifying question and reply template for each one, so every entry point gets the same sub-sixty-second acknowledgement.