A website chatbot for marketing and creative agencies

An agency's contact form produces two things: a handful of real briefs and a great deal of noise. The real briefs are recognisable from four answers, and nobody has to be awake to collect them. An Allinaa assistant on your website asks for them, answers the questions prospects ask before they will book a call, and leaves you a short list instead of an inbox.

The four answers that separate a brief from a browse

1. What the business does and its website, so you can look before you call
2. What they think they need - a site, a campaign, SEO, social, a rebrand - in their own words
3. What is driving it: a launch, a plateau, a competitor, an investor, a date in the calendar
4. Budget and timing, as a range and a quarter rather than a number

The budget question is the one agencies most often leave off the form and most often need. Write it the way a good account director asks it in a first call - with a reason, as a range, and with permission to say they do not know yet - and the assistant will ask it in exactly those words every time.

The questions prospects ask before they will talk to you

• "Do you work on retainer or by project?"
• "What is your minimum engagement?"
• "Who actually does the work - your team or freelancers?"
• "Do you work in our sector, and do you work with our competitors?"
• "Who owns the work and the accounts afterwards?"
• "How long before we see anything?"

Each has one true answer in your agency. The last two are where trust is won: state your position on ownership of ad accounts, domains and creative files plainly, and be honest about timescales rather than optimistic. The assistant repeats what you write, so write what you would be happy to be quoted on in month six.

What it will not say about results

This is the trade most tempted to put numbers on a website, and the assistant is deliberately unable to help with that. It will not promise a ranking, a traffic increase, a cost per lead or a return - and if your own published material contains a figure, it must carry its source and its year, which is the same rule this page is written under. It will not name a client who has not agreed to be named, and it will not describe a result as typical. Write the sentence it uses instead:

Documents, at the moment the prospect has them open

On Premium a prospect can attach what they already have - a brief, a tender document, a brand guideline PDF, a screenshot of an analytics dashboard - and it is checked for viruses and stored privately against the enquiry. Agencies lose days to "can you send that over?", and this removes the round trip. See files customers send.

Tenders, procurement and the enquiries to decline early

Public tenders, competition entries and unpaid pitch requests all arrive through the same form. If there are engagements you do not take - unpaid creative pitches, work below a minimum, sectors you avoid - say so in the knowledge. A polite, specific decline at the first message is better for both sides than silence, and it keeps your inbox for the briefs that matter.

What happens to a brief

The assistant offers the inquiry form once it has the four answers. The prospect confirms their own contact details and agrees to be contacted, you get an e-mail, and the brief waits in your inbox with the answers attached, a status, private notes and CSV export. On Premium each enquiry can be assigned to the right person on the team with an alert. A prospect can ask for a person at any point and the conversation is handed over with the whole thread visible. See capturing contacts and inquiries and one inbox.

Current clients

Your clients will use the chat to ask where their report is. The assistant has no access to your project tools, your ad accounts or your reporting, and should say so and hand over rather than guess at a date. See the launch checklist.