Business drafting
Start from the facts you already have, not a blank screen.
Use customer, quotation, order or service context to prepare a first draft. Your team edits it before anything is sent or saved.
The facts came from the record.The wording still needs a person.
From the record
- Customer
- Apex Components
- Quotation
- QT-1042
- Last conversation
- Asked for an updated delivery date
- Next action
- Send an update
First draft
Dear Apex Components team,
Following our conversation about quotation QT-1042, I am writing with an update on delivery.
We can confirm despatch within two weeks of your order.Please check
Please let me know if you would like any other details from quotation QT-1042.
Nothing in the record says two weeks. A draft can offer the sentence; only a person can commit to the date.
From the record
- Customer
- Kamath Traders
- Requirement
- AX-40 · 100 units
- Quotation
- Prepared
First draft
Dear Kamath Traders,
Please find our quotation for AX-40, 100 units, against your requirement.
The quotation sets out the rate, taxes and delivery terms in full.
We have kept the usual packing and despatch arrangement for your account.Please check
“The usual arrangement” is a claim about this account. The note points at the quotation for the figures and never restates a price.
From the record
- Order
- SO-2087
- Current progress
- Preparing
- Expected dispatch
- 27 Oct
First draft
Thank you for checking on order SO-2087.
The order is being prepared and is expected to despatch on 27 October.Please check
We will confirm as soon as it leaves our warehouse.
“Expected” in the record is an expectation. Whether to tell the customer a date, and which date, is the order desk’s call.
The draft should start from business context.
- The customer record
- Who they are and how you work with them.
- The quotation or order
- The reference the message is about.
- What happened last
- The conversation, the status, the date.
- The next action
- What somebody already decided should happen.
Bringing that context together is its own job, and /grow-sales/customer-360/ owns it. This page uses what is already connected — it does not claim to have assembled the customer history itself.
Customer 360Keep facts and wording separate.
From the record
- The customer
- The quotation or order reference
- The status and the date
- What was asked last time
Draft wording
- The greeting
- The sentence that explains the situation
- The offer or the next step
- The closing line
A reader should be able to point at any fact in the draft and find it in the record. Anything that is not in the record is wording, and wording is where a person belongs.
Draft the message — not the decision.
- A special discount
- The final price
- A commercial commitment
- A promise date that nobody has confirmed
- An approval
- Whether to send it at all
Every one of these is a business decision with a consequence. A draft can leave a space for it; it cannot fill it.
Mark what needs checking.
A date the record does not contain
The draft offered it; nobody confirmed it.
A claim about how this account is usually handled
True of most accounts is not true of this one.
Anything that reads as a commitment
A customer will hold you to a sentence you did not mean to send.
The marker is the words “Please check”, and there is no confidence figure anywhere on this page. A number beside a draft would be a measurement nobody took — and a draft that looked almost certain is exactly the one that gets sent unread.
Drafting is not follow-up automation.
Follow-up automation owns
- When a follow-up should happen
- The next action and who owns it
- The due date
- The reminder
Business drafting owns
- The wording, once somebody knows a message is due
- Starting from the facts already on the record
- Marking what a person has to check
That page’s sentence is “automate the remembering, not the relationship”, and nothing on it sends a customer a message. This page prepares wording for a person to send. Neither owns the other half.
Follow-up AutomationA covering note is not a quotation.
The quotation process owns
- What carries forward from the enquiry
- Where the price comes from
- Which exceptions need approval
- The revision and the follow-up after it is sent
The covering note owns
- The covering text that goes with it
- A short explanation of what is enclosed
- A draft note from a less-structured requirement
The quotation carries the figures. The note points at it. A draft that restated a rate would be inventing a number the quotation process already owns.
Quotation AutomationA reply is an example here, not a support product.
What this page does
- Drafting a reply from order or customer context
- Marking what the person should confirm
What it does not do
- Managing support
- Resolving tickets
- Prioritising cases
- Tracking a service level
- Sending anything automatically
There is no customer service family on this site yet. When there is, the support process will belong to it — this page will still only be drafting the words.
After review, the normal process continues.
Context
What the record already holds
First draft
Wording, with what needs checking marked
A person edits and checks
Corrects, commits, or decides not to send
Send or save as usual
Through the process you already use
A draft feeding your normal sending or saving process is not automation of the business — it is the last step of the drafting. Nothing here sends a message, and nothing here decides that one should be sent.
Where the context and the message come from
- Customer 360Where the customer context is brought together.
- Follow-up AutomationWhen the follow-up is due, and who owns it.
- Quotation AutomationThe quotation itself, and the process around it.
- Ask Your Business DataWhen you need one specific fact before you write.
- AI for BusinessWhere AI helps across reading, finding, drafting and comparing.
What does your team rewrite from scratch every week?
Show us the messages, notes and replies your team types again and again. We’ll help identify which can start from the record, and what a person should still check before anything is sent.