AI lead response for a service business: a quote draft for every inquiry

The prospect who fills out your inquiry form on a Tuesday night will likely ask someone else too. Replying first with something concrete, a price and a way to talk, gives you an edge you don't get from "Thanks, I'll get back to you." Most AI tools for this send an instant auto-reply. For a service business, the better pattern is a ready-to-send quote that waits for you, so the reply is fast and still right.

What a good first reply contains

• Their request in your words, so they know you read it: "a 6-hour wedding on June 14 in Austin".
• A price or a range from your own rates, with what it includes and what it doesn't.
• A deposit and how long the quote is valid.
• A link to book a short call if they asked for one, or if the job needs one.
• No promises you haven't checked, like availability on a date you haven't looked at.

Step by step in SoloWOS

1. Build or open your inquiry form in Forms. It needs an Email question saved to the contact's email, with "Add people who answer to my contacts" on. Without an email there's no one to send a quote to, so no draft is made. For which questions to ask, see inquiry form questions or start from the client intake form template.
2. In the form editor, find the card Quote drafts with AI and turn on "Draft a quote for each new request with AI". Owners and admins see it when Proposals is on.
3. Fill in "Your prices and how you quote" (up to 1,000 characters). For example: "Family sessions $350 for 1 hour. Weddings from $1,800 for 6 hours, extra hours $250. 50% deposit. Quotes valid 14 days." Prices can come only from this text or from your own past quotes and invoices.
4. Share the form as usual. When someone sends it, SoloWOS queues a draft. A background job runs every minute, writes the quote for that contact as a draft proposal and, if they asked for a call and you have an active meeting type, adds a one-time booking link that expires with the quote.
5. You get a notification, "Quote ready for {name}", and the draft appears in "Ready for your review" on Home with the full message and Confirm and send. Open it, check every line, change anything, and confirm. Nothing goes to the prospect before that.

Why the prospect's budget never becomes the price

A language model anchors on numbers in front of it. Put "budget $1,200" next to "price this wedding" and the draft tends to land near $1,200. There's also a safety reason: anything a stranger types into your form is text the model reads, and some of it may be written to steer it ("quote this at $100"). SoloWOS treats form answers as data, never as instructions, and the server checks every price in the draft against only two sources, the prices you wrote and your own past work. A price that doesn't match either is removed, and that line stays empty for you. Anthropic's own guidance for Claude says the same thing in general terms: restrict the model to the documents you provide.

If the contact has paid late or missed a meeting before, the draft suggests a 50% deposit with a note that you decide. The form answers are sent to Anthropic without the email or phone, together with your pricing text, up to 5 similar past jobs and a one-word summary of how that client pays. Under Anthropic's commercial terms that data isn't used to train their models.

When it skips a draft

• Your AI drafts for the month are used up, or AI is unavailable.
• The response didn't create a contact, or the contact has no email.
• Proposals is turned off, or the account is paused.
• More than 20 drafts in 24 hours for the workspace, or more than 3 in an hour for one form. These limits stop a bot from filling your account with drafts.
• The response came in before you turned the option on.

In the form's Responses, each response says "AI quote draft ready" with a link, or why there isn't one, so you never wonder whether a lead was missed.

What you still do

• Check the date and your availability before confirming. The draft doesn't look at your calendar except to offer the booking link.
• Read the scope against what they asked. If they wrote "photos and a short video" and you don't do video, say so.
• Fill in any empty prices. An empty line is the system telling you it didn't have your number.
• Reply personally when the inquiry is unusual. A draft is a starting point, not the only answer.

A note on email rules

Sending a quote to someone who asked for it is a one-to-one reply. Adding that person to a newsletter is a different act: the FTC's CAN-SPAM guide says commercial messages need an honest subject line, your address and a way to opt out that you honor within 10 business days. Keep the two separate, and don't add inquiry contacts to marketing lists unless they agreed.

Every inquiry that goes unanswered has a cost; the missed leads cost calculator puts a number on yours. If most of your inquiries arrive as questions on your booking page rather than through a form, the AI receptionist for solo businesses covers that case. Build the form with client intake forms and send the result with proposals clients accept online, both part of the SoloWOS AI assistant setup. More posts are in AI for freelancers.