AI lead triage for the inbox nobody keeps up with
Inbound enquiries land in a shared inbox and sit there until someone gets around to them. We build AI triage that classifies, logs and escalates every message in seconds, and there's a working demo below.
The problem: leads age in a shared inbox
Most small and mid-sized companies funnel enquiries into one place: a contact form that emails info@, a sales@ inbox, or a support address. Then the failure mode is always the same. Messages arrive faster than anyone checks. Genuine buyers sit unanswered next to spam and newsletters. Nobody knows which enquiries are urgent without opening every single one. By the time a hot lead gets a reply, they've already heard back from a competitor.
Speed matters here more than most teams realise: the odds of qualifying a lead drop sharply within the first hour of it arriving, and a shared inbox checked twice a day burns that window every time.
The fix: classification, logging and alerting without a human in the loop
The build is straightforward to describe. Every inbound message is passed to an AI model that reads it the way a person would and answers three questions: what is this (sales enquiry, support request, spam, something else), how urgent is it, and what's the key detail a human needs to know. From there the workflow acts on the answer:
- Classify. Claude reads the enquiry and returns a category, a priority, and a one-line summary. No keyword rules to maintain, and it copes with messages that don't follow a script.
- Log. Every enquiry lands in a tracking sheet with its classification, timestamp and summary, so there's a single record of what came in and what it was.
- Alert. High-priority leads trigger an immediate notification to the right person, with the summary included, so the response starts in minutes instead of days.
The orchestration runs in n8n, an automation platform your team can open and read: each step in the workflow is visible as a node, not buried in code. The classification uses the Anthropic API. The logging and alerting connect to the tools you already use, Google Sheets and Gmail in the demo, but the same pattern works with a CRM, Slack, or a ticketing system.
Watch the working build
This is a live demonstration of the exact workflow described above, recorded end to end in our own environment: an enquiry arrives, gets classified by Claude, is logged to the tracking sheet, and fires a high-priority alert, all within seconds and with no manual input.
Demonstration build in our own environment. This is the standard every client project is held to.
What you end up owning
The n8n workflow itself, the prompt and classification logic, the connections into your inbox and tools, and documentation covering how it works and how to adjust the categories as your business changes. It runs on your accounts. When we hand over, our access is revoked, and your team can operate and extend it without us.
See what this would look like on your inbox
Tell us where your enquiries land and what happens to them today. In 20 minutes we'll map what a triage build for your setup involves.
Book a free 20-minute call