AGENT-RUN BACK OFFICE — CUSTOMER OUTREACH
Past customers go quiet because nobody follows up.
The cheapest work you will win this year is from somebody who has already paid you once. Most businesses never speak to them again after the invoice clears — not from strategy, but because following up is nobody’s actual job.
Free · 20 minutes · no commitment
WHO THIS IS FOR
Businesses sitting on years of past customers they have never contacted again, because following up was nobody's job and never the most urgent thing on the desk.
THE PROBLEM
It stays undone because it never feels urgent. There is always something with a deadline, and a customer who has not been in touch since March does not generate one. By the time their absence is obvious they have already found somebody else.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
Outreach
A reply, handed to you
FROM THE SHOP’S CUSTOMER HISTORY · BASIS CHECKED BEFORE EVERY SEND
- The shop · text
Hi, it’s the shop. It’s been over a year since we did your brakes, and we’re booking winter tire changeovers now. Want a time? Reply STOP to opt out.
DRAFTED BY THE AGENT · SENT BY PRIYA, TUE 10:00 AM · BASIS: PAID REPAIR, AUG 2025 - Customer · text
Yes please. Can you also look at a squeak from the back?
HANDED TO PRIYA · WED 9:14 AM - Priya · at the shop
Thursday at 8:30 for the tires, and we’ll check the squeak while it’s up. See you then.
BOOKED BY PRIYA
The rest of Tuesday’s list
Follow-up · alignment on Monday
Text · basis: paid repair, Monday
Sent by PriyaReview request · oil change
Text, drafted an hour after pickup · basis: paid service, Tuesday
Sent by PriyaBack in touch · last in May 2024
Implied consent ended May 2026; no express consent on file
Not sentBack in touch · last in March 2025
Replied STOP in June · off text and email for good
Opted out
The agent drafts each message and checks its basis; a person at the shop sends it. Only past customers with a recorded basis hear from you, and every reply goes to a person.
What you get.
- Follow-up after a job is finished, on the channel that customer already uses with you.
- Review requests timed to when the work is fresh, not a batch sent to everyone on a Friday.
- Reactivation of customers who have gone quiet, with the last thing you did for them in front of you.
- A suppression list that actually works: one opt-out and that person is out everywhere, permanently, without anyone having to remember.
- A recorded basis for every contact — who consented, when, and how — so the question can be answered, not argued.
How it works.
Priced against the scope, after a Diagnostic that is small on purpose. The shape of the work we can tell you now.
- THE SHAPE
- Ongoing, and deliberately quiet. Frequency is agreed with you and tuned down after launch, never set at the maximum the law allows.
- WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU
- Your customer history, and a decision on what you actually want to say. We will not invent a tone of voice for your business.
- WHAT YOU KEEP
- The contact history, the consent record and the suppression list, exportable — they are your obligations, not ours to hold hostage.
What this does not include.
Published because you should know before the call, not after the invoice.
- Cold outreach to people who have never bought from you. That is marketing, it carries different consent rules, and it is scoped as its own piece of work.
- Buying, renting or scraping a contact list. Not at any price.
- Sending to anyone without a recorded basis for contacting them. If we cannot show why a message was allowed, it does not go.
- Legal advice on anti-spam law. We build to a conservative reading and your counsel confirms it.
QUESTIONS
How is this different from spam?
Every recipient has an existing relationship with you and a recorded basis for being contacted, every message is one a reasonable customer would expect from a business they used, and one opt-out removes them everywhere. Cold lists are explicitly out of scope — that is the line, and it is the reason this can be built at all.
What about Canadian anti-spam law?
CASL is the reason this service is scoped the way it is. Commercial electronic messages need consent, and an existing business relationship gives implied consent for a limited window after a purchase, not forever. So we build to the recorded basis, expire it instead of assuming it lasts, and honour unsubscribes immediately. We are not lawyers and we say so — your counsel should confirm the approach before it goes live.
What happens when somebody replies?
It goes to a person, the same day. An agent that opens a conversation and then handles the reply itself is how a good follow-up becomes an annoying one.
MORE UNDER AGENT-RUN BACK OFFICE
WHERE THIS APPLIES
The industries whose page names Agent-Run Back Office as one of the places we would start. Each one is written for that trade, with its own numbers.
Bring us one bad week.
Book a pilot call. Tell us where the week goes wrong, and we’ll tell you what an Operations Diagnostic would map and measure.
The first paid step has a clear scope and an end date, and the pilot after it is one workflow — not a platform, and not an open-ended retainer.
Free · 20 minutes · no commitment