Furnace banging since last night
Hi, the furnace started making a loud banging noise when it kicks on. It still heats. Is there any chance someone could come look at it today? Thanks, Dana
For small businesses
Your business has a new employee.
Workbench connects to the tools your business runs on and does the routine work: it answers the inbox, tracks bills, chases quotes that went quiet and remembers every customer. When it isn’t sure, it texts you, and nothing reaches a customer until you say yes, unless you tell it otherwise.
On shift
Sample shift · a heating company
Text from Workbench · question 3
Dana Ruiz (2 jobs since March) says her furnace has been banging since last night and asks if someone can come today.
“Hi Dana, sorry to hear that. We can have a tech there between 1 and 3 this afternoon. Does that work?”
Send this reply?
Your turn. It waits for you, and nothing goes to Dana until you answer.
Where it works
One employee, connected to the tools you already use.
Email came first because that’s where most small business work starts. Each new connection gives the same employee more to do, under the same rules: it decides with questions, and it asks you before anything goes out.
Doing jobs today
- Gmail and Google WorkspaceSorts, drafts replies, files bills, chases follow-ups
- Outlook and Microsoft 365The same mail jobs: sorts, drafts replies, forwards, chases follow-ups
- Google Calendar and Microsoft CalendarFinds your free times, drafts invites, offers times to new leads
- Facebook PageRuns a members-only store for your drops, tracks claims and posts
- Text messagesAsks you questions and takes your answers
- TelegramQuestions with buttons, the morning note, and a chat with your employee
- Your website and documentsReads your pages, PDFs and spreadsheets, and uses them in answers and drafts
- You, in plain words“Archive everything from that supplier.” “What’s overdue?”
Connects today, jobs coming
It can connect to these and read them now. Its first jobs in them are being built.
- Google Drive
- OneDrive and SharePoint
On the list
- Slack
- Microsoft Teams
How it decides
Before it acts, it answers questions about the job.
Is this a customer? Do they want a quote? How urgent is it? Each answer comes with how sure it is, and those numbers decide what happens next. Here it is with one email. A language model writes the drafts, but it never decides.
Five questions, one pass
- Yes or noIs this from a customer?Yes97%
- Yes or noDoes it ask for a visit or a quote?Yes94%
- Scale 0–3How urgent is it?2 of 3
- Pick oneWho should handle it: you, sales or nobody?You89%
- Yes or noIs it a newsletter or a promotion?No2%
Decision: sure enough to write a reply. A reply to a customer needs your yes, so it texts you the draft.
Sure
It does the job, if you’ve allowed that job.
Somewhat sure
It gets the job ready and asks you.
Unsure
It leaves the email for you and doesn’t guess.
Each question has its own bar, and we can tune the bars for your business.
You set the limits
You decide how much it does alone.
Each job has its own setting. Replies to customers can wait for your yes while bills get filed by themselves. Pick a level to see what happens to four items from the same morning.
It archives, labels and files on its own, and asks you about the rest.
- Fall deals on filtersSupply House WeeklyArchived
- Invoice #4471Northside SupplyFiled under Bills, due Oct 3
- Quote for a new AC unitNew lead via websiteAsks: forward to Sam?
- Can we move Thursday to Friday?Priya Shah, customerDrafts a reply, asks you
2 handled alone · 2 waiting on you
Talk to it
Call your employee from your phone.
Tap the microphone in the phone app and talk. It answers out loud, and you can talk over it to interrupt, as you would on a phone call. Ask what’s overdue, what came in this morning, or tell it to draft a reply while you drive to the next job.
- A live caption shows the words as they are said
- Mute, or type a name or number into the call
- A spoken yes never sends anything: drafts show as cards to tap
- After the call, a summary of what it did and what waits for you
- The words are saved in your chat. The audio is not kept
Why owners keep it on
It works like a good new hire: asks early, then asks less.
You answer from your phone
Questions come by text, Telegram or email, each with a number. Reply “yes”, “no”, or say what to change (“yes, but offer 2 to 4”). Your team can answer the sorting questions. Anything that goes out to a customer waits for you.
It stops asking once it gets a job right
Approve the same job 15 times in a row, like archiving supplier promos, and it does that job alone from then on. One Undo puts it back on asking.
It knows your customers
Every email and bill adds to a record for that person, so a draft to Dana knows about her two jobs since March.
Tell it a rule in plain words
“Whenever you see an email like this, archive it.” It shows you the rule, then checks its first five uses with you.
It chases what went quiet
A customer who never answered your quote, a thread that stalled: it keeps a list and drafts the nudge.
It remembers what you promised
“I’ll send the estimate by Friday.” It spots a promise in the mail you send, asks if it should track it, and reminds you until it’s done.
It reads what you’ve already written
Point it at your website, or give it a PDF, a spreadsheet or a photo of a price list. Its answers and drafts use your real policies and prices, and it checks each draft against them.
It finds a time to meet
A new lead gets a drafted reply with three times you’re really free, read from your calendar. When an email asks to meet, it can draft the invite for your click.
Ask it in plain words
Anything you can do with a button, you can ask for in a sentence, typed or out loud: “archive everything from that supplier”, “what’s overdue?”, “find the email about the permit”. The same rules apply, and a spoken yes never sends anything.
It tells you what it did
A morning brief, a note at the end of the day, and a “Why?” button on every decision it made.
Your business gets its own install
Your own app and your own database, not a shared one. We don’t sell your data or use it for ads.
Use cases
Built for small businesses where the owner does everything.
Pricing
Pilot pricing, set on a call.
We’re taking on a small number of businesses right now and setting each one up ourselves. The price depends on how much you want it to handle, so we work it out with you.
Pilot
Price agreed on the call
- Setup with us on a call
- Your own install and database
- Every mailbox and account you connect
- Questions by text, Telegram and email
- Bills, follow-ups, meetings and customer records
- A direct line to the people building it
Questions
What owners ask first.
Will it contact my customers without asking me?
Not unless you turn that on. On the first two levels, every reply to a customer is a draft that waits for your yes. On “Also forwards and replies when sure” it sends replies it is at least 85% sure of, and asks you about the rest. You can pick a different level for each job.
What does it connect to?
It does real work today in Gmail, Google Workspace and Outlook (more than one mailbox, side by side), in Google Calendar and Microsoft Calendar, on your Facebook Page, and over text messages and Telegram. It also reads your website and the documents you give it. It can already connect to Google Drive, OneDrive and SharePoint, and its first jobs there are being built. Tell us what your business runs on.
Who can see my business’s data?
Your install runs on its own database, apart from every other business. Only the people you add to your team can sign in. To do the work, the text it works on goes to the AI services that do it: one that makes the decisions, one that writes drafts, and one for speech when you talk with it. None of them gets it for any other purpose.
What if it gets something wrong?
Press Undo. The job it got wrong goes back to asking you first, and the correction teaches it. Every decision is in the log with the reason it made it.
What jobs does it do today?
It sorts and answers email, tracks bills and due dates, keeps a list of conversations waiting on a reply and drafts the nudge, and remembers every customer. It answers new leads with times you’re free, drafts invites for emails that ask to meet, and tracks the promises you make to customers. It learns your policies and prices from your website and documents. Sellers with a Facebook group can use its members-only store, with timed drops and tracked posts. You can also ask it for any of this in plain words, typed or out loud, from your computer or your phone.
How long does setup take?
We set it up with you on a call. You connect your accounts, tell it about your business and pick a level for each job. Expect a lot of questions in the first week. They taper off as it learns.
Put it on shift for a week.
On the call we look at how your business runs day to day, decide what it should handle first, and set it up. It asks a lot in the first week, which is how it learns your business.