Buyer guide
AI consultant vs AI automation agency: which partner should you hire?
Hire an AI automation consultant to find where work breaks down, an agency to automate a process your team can already describe, or an implementation partner to redesign it and carry it into daily use.
What should the first engagement deliver?
- AI automation consultant
You know the symptom, such as slow callbacks, but staff disagree about what causes it. Ask a consultant to trace recent inquiries with the people who handled them.
What to ask for. A recommendation you can act on. It should identify where work stalls, how often it happens and which change to test first.
- Automation agency
Your team can already specify the task. For example, every completed inquiry should create one CRM record and assign it to the right rep.
What to ask for. A working connection your team can test. Submit the same inquiry twice, leave a required field blank and check who gets the exception.
- AI implementation partner
Several teams use the same information to make different decisions. Alongside the software, someone needs to redesign the handoff, teach staff how to use it and support it after launch.
What to ask for. A workflow staff can run from end to end, with a person responsible for exceptions and a measure the team can compare with its starting point.
Why a law firm needed more than a form connection
An intake form could tell a rep who to call. The harder question was what to ask once the prospect picked up. Reps pieced together earlier conversations, repeated questions and spent time with prospects the firm could have ruled out sooner.
We studied the performance histories of the firm’s strongest reps to see how they decided whom to sign and when to end a conversation. We put those qualification questions in a consistent order and brought the prospect’s earlier answers into the brief for the next call.
At this firm, phone time on calls that ended in a signed retainer fell from 60 to 15 minutes. Conversion to signed clients rose from 9% to 17%. Read the sales intake case study.
Ask a prospective partner to walk through one record
Use an example your staff know well. Follow it from the first inquiry to the point where someone makes a decision. Three questions reveal what a proposal covers.
- What will the employee see? Ask to see the original answer alongside the proposed update. The employee should be able to tell who supplied it and when.
- What happens if two sources disagree? Give the provider a conflicting record. Ask who receives it, what pauses and how the reviewer’s decision reaches the next person.
- How will we know the work helped? Agree on an outcome your team already cares about, who measures it and how to count it. In sales intake, signing a client and booking a call are different outcomes.
For intake teams, our guide to repeated intake questions shows where to start. For a rollout across teams, see the enterprise implementation guide.
Before you commission the work
- What should we bring to the first conversation?
- Bring one ordinary example, one handoff that failed and the person who handles both. Remove identifying details. Show what arrived, what the employee had to look up and what the next person needed to decide.
- How do we compare proposals with very different prices?
- Ask each provider to price the same first workflow. Separate the assessment, build, staff training and ongoing support. Check which systems are included and who fixes the connection when a source changes.
- When should we wait before paying for a build?
- If two managers give different answers about who may approve a record, settle that decision first. A short assessment can document the rule, its owner and a real example to test before you commission software.
If you need one partner to assess, build and support the workflow, see Meru’s workflow automation services.
Written by Jose Okabe, Meru AI.