Instant intake
The moment the form is submitted, a nested Drive folder, a new tracker row and a welcome email with the wedding pack attached are all in place before the couple has closed the tab.
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Operations Automation · Hospitality & Events
A Kos Island wedding planner stopped losing couples to faster replies
A boutique destination-wedding planner on Kos Island was losing bookings before a single planning call happened — not from a lack of couples enquiring, but from how long it took to get back to them. We built an automation that answers, organises and follows up the moment an enquiry lands, in under an hour instead of three days.
3.5 hrs → 10 min
Admin per new enquiry
3 days → <1 hr
Enquiry to fully handled
$0 / mo
Cost to run
The Problem
Three days, three people, and a couple already gone
A new enquiry arrived the same way it always had: through the website contact form or a DM. Someone copied the details into a notes app. A team member created a folder on Google Drive, copied the details into a shared spreadsheet, and emailed a welcome pack — packages and pricing — when they remembered to.
Destination-wedding couples don't enquire with one planner. They enquire with two or three, at the same time, and book with whoever replies fastest and most professionally. By the time the team followed up, 30% of couples had already booked elsewhere. Their own calculation: 3.5 hours of admin per enquiry, spread across three people, before a single planning call ever happened.
Before
- Welcome packs sent whenever someone remembered — sometimes days later
- Venue and date conflicts checked two days in, if at all
- Three days from enquiry to an assigned planner
- 30% of couples already booked with a faster-replying competitor
The Solution
A same-day reply that runs itself
We built an automation that fires the instant a couple submits the enquiry form. It creates the booking folder, logs the enquiry, sends a personalised welcome pack by email, opens a task for the assigned planner with a ready-made checklist, and alerts the creative director on duty — all within about a minute, with nobody at a desk needing to do any of it.
If the couple hasn't confirmed receipt within 48 hours, one chase email goes out automatically, without anyone needing to remember.
Built-in accountability
Every booking creates a task for the assigned planner with a ready-made checklist — check availability, send pricing, book the call, update the calendar — plus an instant email to the creative director on duty.
Automatic follow-through
An hourly check reads the tracker and chases any couple who hasn't confirmed receipt after 48 hours, exactly once, so no enquiry goes quiet just because someone forgot.
In practice
How we solved it
The parts that actually needed thinking
When the free staff-alert channel disappeared overnight
Days before the build started, Microsoft retired the free webhook connector the planned staff-alert channel depended on — the only replacement needs a paid work licence. We rerouted staff alerts through email instead: the same couple, package, timeline and task details, landing in an inbox every planner already checks, at no extra cost.
A welcome pack that survives a server with no memory
The free hosting tier wipes its disk on every restart, and the cloud-drive credential meant to serve the welcome pack had already expired. We embedded the pack directly inside the automation's own code as data, so sending it never depends on fetching a file from anywhere else.
A 48-hour timer that can't oversleep
Holding a 48-hour countdown open in memory doesn't survive a free-tier server that goes to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity. Instead, an hourly check reads the tracker and chases anyone still unconfirmed — restart-safe, because it never has anything to remember between checks.
Assigning planners without a headcount of software seats
The task board's people-picker only understands invited workspace members mapped by internal ID — unnecessary setup for a simple hand-off. The planner's name is a plain field instead: it shows up immediately, needs no invitations, and can be upgraded later if the team grows into the tool full-time.
The Outcome
What changed after go-live
Before
- Welcome packs sent whenever someone remembered — sometimes days later
- Venue and date conflicts checked two days in, if at all
- Three days from enquiry to an assigned planner
- 30% of couples already booked with a faster-replying competitor
After
- Every couple has a welcome pack and booking reference within a minute of enquiring
- Planner and creative director notified instantly, with a checklist already waiting
- Zero missed follow-ups — the 48-hour chase never depends on anyone's memory
- Three people freed from coordinating a single admin hand-off
3.5 hrs → 10 min
Admin time per booking
24 / 7
Automatic coverage
< 60 sec
For the pipeline to complete
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