Workflow automation
How do you follow up on a quote without chasing it by hand?
Decide what "gone quiet" means for your kind of job
A quote for a blocked drain and a quote for a kitchen refit don't go quiet in the same way. The first customer wants someone today and may have phoned others already. The second may be waiting for a partner, a bond or a second opinion.
So set the gap between your quote and your first nudge from how your own customers decide, and write it down per type of job if you sell very different things. Look back at the quotes you won recently and see how long each customer took to say yes. That's your evidence, and it's better than any rule borrowed from someone else's industry.
Ask something the customer can answer
"Just checking in on the quote we sent" gives the customer nothing to reply to. They can ignore it without feeling rude.
A useful nudge asks a question with an easy answer:
- Did the quote cover everything you had in mind, or should we add or remove anything?
- Would it help to split it into stages?
- Do you want us to hold the date we pencilled in, or let it go?
- Is there anyone else who needs to see it before you decide?
Each of these opens a conversation about the job. A reply of "can you drop the second bathroom?" is worth more than a polite silence, because now you can send a revised quote instead of guessing.
If you send further nudges, make each say something new. A later nudge could answer a question customers ask you about this kind of work, or show what's included that a cheaper quote might leave out. Repeating the first message louder gives the customer nothing new to answer.
Put a validity date on the quote
A quote with no end date can sit in an inbox indefinitely, and you can't tell a slow decision from a lost job. An end date fixes both. It gives the customer a reason to decide, and it gives your follow-up something honest to say: "The price on this quote holds until the date at the top. After that we'd need to check material prices again."
It also protects you. Supplier prices move, and an old quote accepted much later can turn into a job you lose money on.
Pick the channel, and know the rules that come with it
Use the channel the customer used to ask for the quote, where you can. Email suits a long quote with a PDF. SMS suits a short nudge with a link back to the quote.
WhatsApp comes with rules of its own. Meta won't let a business message someone on WhatsApp until that person has opted in, and the opt-in has to state your business's name and make clear they're agreeing to hear from you. If the customer messaged you on WhatsApp, a customer service window opens and you can reply freely while it lasts; when it closes, you can only send pre-approved template messages. A nudge sent after that window has closed has to be a template, so it has to be written and approved before anything goes live.
The wording of that template matters. Meta's template categorisation rules describe a utility template as non-promotional and specific to, or requested by, the customer. They class a message that mixes utility content with marketing content as marketing. Meta decides the category from the wording, and a nudge that pushes the customer to go ahead can be classed as marketing even though they asked for the quote. Add "and while you're here, ask us about our maintenance plans" and it counts as marketing.
POPIA draws a similar line. Its direct marketing section prohibits direct marketing by electronic communication, SMS and email included, unless the person has consented or is an existing customer under the conditions the section sets out. Every direct marketing message must name the sender and say how to ask for the messages to stop. Keep the follow-up about the quote, and keep offers for other services out of it. If you're unsure which side of that line a message sits on, ask your information officer or an attorney, and our guide to POPIA for WhatsApp chatbots goes further into consent.
Know when to stop
The sequence ends when any of these happens:
- The customer replies, on any channel.
- They accept the quote.
- They say no, or ask you to stop.
- The validity date passes and your last message has gone out.
The reply rule is the one that's hard to keep by hand. If the customer phones your office on Tuesday, the WhatsApp nudge booked for Wednesday has to be cancelled, and that is easy to miss when the channels are kept apart. It works when every call, message and quote writes to the same customer record and the follow-up checks that record before it sends. That's the reason to have a CRM the follow-up can read.
When a quote ends without an answer, mark it lost and note the reason if you know it: price, timing, went with someone else, no reply. That list tells you whether your quotes, your prices or your follow-up need work.
What a person still decides
A customer who replies "can you do it for less?" is asking for a lower price, and that's your call. So is a request to change the scope in a way your price list doesn't cover, or a reply that's really a complaint. In those cases the workflow should stop the nudges and hand the conversation to the right person with the quote and the history in front of them, so nobody asks the customer to repeat themselves.
Will automated follow-up annoy my customers?
It can, if it's generic, repetitive or keeps going after they've answered. The rules above are there to prevent exactly that: a message that refers to their job, asks a question they can answer, and stops as soon as they respond. Written that way, it reads to the customer as you keeping track of their job.
It can also go wrong in dull ways, so test it on yourself. Request a quote from your own business, don't reply, and see what arrives and when. Then do it again and reply on a different channel from the nudge's, and check the sequence stops.
How we set up quote follow-up
Quote follow-up is part of the workflow automation we build. Our quoting automation sends the quotation, chases it when it isn't accepted, and turns an acceptance into a job and an invoice, with the quote logged against the customer record. The follow-up sequence stops the instant the customer replies. Price reductions and non-standard pricing stay with your team.
We start with what you already run (your accounting package, calendar, inbox and phone line) and build against their documented interfaces. If your quotes start life as a website enquiry, our guide to automating follow-up after a website enquiry covers the step before this, and our WhatsApp chatbot page explains how the platform side works.
Tell us how a quote leaves your business today and what happens after it's sent, and we'll map a follow-up that runs itself and hands the decisions to your team. Start with workflow automation.