Start with one source of truth
An AI agent is only as good as the facts it works from. Before building a single agent, I put everything the business knows into one place: classes, prices, policies, the venue, the team. Every fact is marked draft or verified, and an agent may only quote a verified fact to a customer.
That one rule stops the most common AI mistake in a small business: a confident answer that's simply wrong.
Give every agent a job description
Each agent gets a short written brief, the same as a new member of staff would:
- Its job, in one sentence
- What it reads, and what it writes
- What it may do on its own
- What it must ask about first
- What it must never do
Draft first, send later
Every agent starts by drafting. Anything a customer will see, and anything with a price on it, waits for a person to approve. Agents earn the right to do more on their own once they've proved they get it right.
Measure before you start
Write down how many emails come in, how long replies take and where the hours go before anything changes. Otherwise there's no way to tell whether the agents helped.
Where to start
The best first agents take a lot of small, repetitive jobs off a person's plate: sorting the inbox, asking for reviews after a visit, and following up enquiries that went quiet.
Written by Ernie Hoggard, founder of Ernex.