How to find the job worth handing to an AI agent.
Short answer
The best first job for an agent isn't the smallest one. It's the one that touches the phone, the inbox and two or three pieces of software, and needs someone to remember to chase it.
Start with the job that crosses the most systems
The best first job for an agent isn't the smallest one. It's the one that touches the phone, the inbox and two or three pieces of software, and needs someone to remember to chase it.
Those jobs cost the most because they wait. A maintenance request waits for someone to open the work order. A sub's payment waits for a lien waiver nobody asked for. A menu change waits for someone to log into six dashboards.
An agent doesn't get tired of the chasing, and it does the steps the same way every time.
Five questions that find it
- Where does work sit waiting for a person?. Requests in an inbox, voicemails, forms nobody has opened. Waiting is where money and customers leak.
- What gets copied from one system to another?. Invoice details typed into QuickBooks, orders retyped from a PDF, a menu changed on every app by hand.
- What do you chase people for?. Documents from clients, waivers from subs, answers from vendors, renewals from carriers.
- What breaks when one person is out?. If only one person knows how a job gets done, it's a job worth writing down and handing off.
- What deadline have you missed before?. Dispute windows, filing deadlines, notice periods, expiring certificates. A missed date usually has a price.
Write the job down the way an agent needs it
Every agent job comes down to five answers. Here's one written out for an apartment maintenance request.
| Part | The question | Maintenance request |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | How do people bring it the job? | Residents call, text or email, with a photo |
| People | Who can ask, and what may each do? | Residents report; the manager approves vendor spend over a limit |
| Systems | What does it work in? | Buildium Premium or AppFolio Max, the vendor list, the calendar |
| Steps | What does it do, in order? | Sort emergencies, open the work order, pick the vendor, schedule entry |
| Output | Who hears about it, and how? | Resident gets the visit time; on-call gets paged for emergencies |
What makes a job a good fit
- It happens every week, or it's rare but expensive to get wrong
- The steps are the same each time, even if the details change
- The information lives in systems the agent can be given access to
- Someone can say yes or no when a decision is needed
What to keep with people
- Judgment calls: legal, clinical and financial decisions
- Spending money above a limit you set
- Anything you'd want to explain to a customer yourself
A good agent proposes and a person approves. It reads changes back, waits for a yes, and logs everything it does.
How to start
Pick one job. Book a free 15-minute call and walk us through it. We'll tell you whether an agent can take it on, how it would work and what it would cost.
If you go ahead, we map the job with you, connect your systems and test the agent on your real work before it goes live. Then we run it, and the same agent takes on the next job when you're ready.
Published
Use cases behind this answer
Maintenance from report to closed
Residents call, text or email a repair. The agent sorts emergencies, opens the work order, sends the vendor and follows up until it's closed.
More from the blog
- What's the best way to automate your proposal process?
- How do you build a back office AI agent for a small business?
- How do you automate client intake?
- How do you automate invoicing from your team's time and job records?
- How do you automate the invoices, receipts and forms coming into your inbox?
- How much does an AI receptionist cost?
What job would you hand to an agent?
Book a free 15-minute call. Tell us the job that eats your week and we'll tell you how an agent would handle it and what it would cost.