How to map your website inquiry workflow.

Follow one inquiry from beginning to end.

Use a fictional message such as “Can you send your office hours?” Write down where it arrives, who sees it and what that person needs before answering. Keep the exercise business-only; do not paste real records or messages into a demonstration.

Now describe what “finished” means. Sending a draft to an inbox, asking someone to reply and confirming a meeting are different states. A workflow map should keep those states separate.

Ask five concrete questions.

• Where does the inquiry arrive?
• Who is responsible for reviewing it?
• Which approved source supplies the answer?
• What action must the owner take next?
• What happens if information is missing, the tool fails or the owner is unavailable?

Make the gap visible.

In a fictional office, an inquiry reaches a shared inbox. Two people can read it, but neither has been assigned to reply. Adding an AI draft does not resolve that ownership gap. Naming an owner and a backup is a useful first change.

Draw the ordinary path, then add the exception path underneath. For example: inbox → owner reviews → approved reply → next step recorded. If there is no approved answer, route to a person rather than inventing one.

Fictional demo business, demo data. The example illustrates a process, not a client result.

Rehearse before automating.

Try an ordinary inquiry, a duplicate, an incomplete message and a failed step. Check that the owner can see which state the work reached. Agree how the team stops the automated step and continues manually.

Only then ask whether an existing setting, a shared task or a bounded automation would make the route easier to manage. The useful deliverable is a handoff someone can explain and test—not simply a more polished AI response.