The average SA professional spends 2.5 hours per day in email. Most of that time isn't writing thoughtful replies — it's reading, sorting, drafting routine acknowledgements, chasing quotes, and rewording the same five answers. Email is the original asynchronous communication tool, and AI is uniquely good at the tedious parts.
We build email automation that handles inbox triage, drafts replies in your voice, auto-handles routine categories, and queues meaningful emails for human review with the AI's draft pre-filled. Your sent items still sound like you. Your inbox gets quieter.
What we build
Inbox triage
Incoming email categorised by intent — quote request, support, complaint, internal, newsletter, calendar — with priority scoring and routing.
AI-drafted replies
Drafts written in your voice, ready in your inbox before you've finished reading the original. Edit and send in seconds.
Auto-acknowledge
Routine acknowledgements, "received your enquiry, will reply within X" responses sent automatically with no review.
Follow-up automation
Quote went out 7 days ago, no reply? AI drafts a follow-up. Two weeks? Drafts a "still relevant?" check-in.
Attachment handling
Invoices, statements, contracts arriving by email — extracted, processed, posted to your accounting/CRM. Email never touched.
Out-of-office intelligence
Genuine OOO that handles routine queries while you're away rather than just bouncing them.
What's different from Gmail's "Smart Compose"
Smart Compose suggests next phrases. Useful, but limited. Real email automation does three things Smart Compose can't:
Draft entire replies grounded in context. Pulls history with this contact, current deal status from CRM, prior agreed terms — and writes a draft that's actually relevant, not just grammatical.
Triage and route at scale. Smart Compose helps you write one email faster. Email automation reads 200 incoming emails, categorises them, routes them, drafts replies, and presents you a sorted queue.
Follow-up without prompting. Smart Compose only fires when you start typing. Email automation watches your sent items, notices the unanswered quotes, drafts the follow-up. Your "I keep meaning to chase that" moments stop happening.
Who it's for
- Email-heavy roles. Sales reps, account managers, professionals doing 100+ emails/day.
- Quote-and-proposal businesses. Where pipeline leaks happen in unfollowed-up email threads.
- Customer-facing teams. Where reply quality and speed matter equally.
- Solo professionals and small teams. Where there's no admin support to handle the inbox.
Typical SA deployment
Representative implementation: SA professional services firm, partner with email volume of ~140/day. Figures illustrative.
Baseline: ~3 hours/day on email. Quote follow-ups inconsistent (some chased, some forgotten). Average response time on incoming enquiries: 4-8 hours. ~40% of inbox was internal noise (CCs, notifications, irrelevant updates).
What we built: Gmail integration with: triage/categorisation, AI drafts in inbox for sales/support categories, auto-acknowledge for routine enquiries, follow-up automation tracking quotes/proposals, internal noise auto-archived (with override), weekly summary of unread/escalated.
Representative results after eight weeks:
- Email time: 3 hours/day → ~70 minutes/day
- Average response time: 4-8 hours → 35 minutes
- Quote follow-ups missed: 28% → ~3%
- Inbox at end of day: ~40 unread → 0-5 unread
What it costs
Implementation. R14,000 to R55,000. Solo professional with one inbox: R14,000-R22,000. Team-wide deployment with shared mailbox routing, CRM integration, and follow-up automation: R32,000-R55,000.
Monthly running. R900-R3,500 per inbox depending on volume. AI usage scales with email count.
POPIA & data handling
- Permission-aware. Only reads what you authorise. Granular per-folder, per-sender exclusions.
- Sensitive folders excluded by default. HR, legal, board correspondence — never touched unless explicitly opted-in.
- ZA-region processing available. Private deployment for high-confidentiality use cases.
- Audit log. Every AI action — read, draft, send, route — logged with timestamp.
How to start
30-min call to discuss email volume, biggest pain points, and existing email environment. We typically pilot on one inbox or one role to demonstrate fit before broader rollout.
Email info@faautosolutions.com or use the contact form.