The Automation tier of PDA is the top of our stack. When clients reach it, the temptation is to start automating everything in sight. Lead handling, follow-ups, content drafts, scheduling, internal comms. The tools are mature enough that you can.
We say no to a lot of those requests. Here's the rule we use.
If it doesn't work manually, don't automate it.
An automation is a process that's been written down so a computer can run it. If your manual process is fuzzy, the automation will be a fuzzy process that runs reliably.. which is worse than the original fuzziness, because it'll run wrong all the time without you noticing.
We always start by asking the owner to walk us through the manual version. Where's the handoff? Who decides what? What's the exception path? If those answers aren't clean, we fix the manual process first. Then we automate.
Things we almost never automate
- Anything where customer trust is at stake.. the first response to a new lead, sensitive support
- Decisions that need judgment.. pricing for custom work, sales qualification past a basic filter
- Outputs that need to read "human".. initial outreach emails, condolence notes
Things we love to automate: routine notifications, document generation from templates, data hygiene tasks, internal alerts, content drafts that humans edit.