The Automations That Actually Made My Small Business Better

TL;DR: Your employees are probably wasting hours on work a machine should be doing. Here are two examples from my own small business (a system integration and a smarter phone system) that eliminated errors, freed up 10% of my team's time, and cut unnecessary calls by 25%.

The Problem Nobody Talks About

Most small businesses run on three to five software tools that don't talk to each other. You've got your accounting software over here, your scheduling tool over there, maybe a separate CRM, a payment processor, and whatever spreadsheet is holding everything else together. Each one does its job fine in isolation.

The problem is the gaps between them.

At Stew's Garage, we had a CRM, a waiver system, and an online booking system with integrated payments. Three tools, zero integration. Every time a customer booked, an employee had to manually enter the same information into each system. Every. Single. Time.

That's not just tedious. It's where errors live. Transposing a phone number, misspelling a name, missing a waiver. When humans are copying data between systems, mistakes aren't a matter of if, but when.

What I Built: Connecting the Systems

I built a Python API service that connected all three systems. When a customer booked online, their deposit was automatically entered into the CRM, and if they were new, their account was created on the spot. The system checked whether they had a signed waiver within the past year. If not, their account was flagged so staff knew a new waiver was needed. Once the customer signed, their contact info updated in the CRM and the waiver date reset so they wouldn't get flagged again. No copying, no pasting, no typos.

The results were immediate:

• Transcription errors dropped to zero. Not reduced. Eliminated. The data was entered once by the customer and moved automatically from there.
• Employees got roughly 10% of their time back each week. That's time that had been spent on mindless data entry, now redirected to work that actually required a human brain.

You don't need to be a software engineer to build something like this. You need a clear understanding of the problem and a willingness to experiment. I used an early version of ChatGPT to help me write the code. The tool did the heavy lifting, but I had to know what to ask for.

What I Built: A Phone System That Respects People's Time

Another example: a cloud-based phone system using AWS and 3CX. The centerpiece was an automated assistant that could handle the questions we got asked fifty times a day: What are your hours? Where are you located? How much does a bay rental cost?

I recorded the assistant in my own voice (not a generic text-to-speech robot) and we called it "Robo Stew." It was a small thing, but it kept the brand personality intact even in an automated interaction. Customers got a laugh out of it instead of the usual corporate phone tree dread.

But the design choice that mattered most: making it easy to reach a real human, fast. Nobody wants to fight through six layers of menu options when they have a real question. Robo Stew gave people instant answers for the basics and a quick route to a real person for everything else.

The results:

• 25% fewer calls ringing through to staff. Customers got the basic information they needed without waiting on hold or pulling an employee away from their work.
• Easy paging and call transfers between locations. The cloud setup meant our team could route calls seamlessly, regardless of where they were physically. If we had internet, we could have a phone there.

The automated assistant didn't replace my team. It handled the repetitive stuff so they could spend their time on conversations that actually required judgment, empathy, and expertise.

The Principle

Here's the pattern across both projects: automate what's repetitive and predictable. Keep humans for what requires judgment and empathy.

Data entry between systems? Repetitive and predictable. Automate it.

Answering "What are your hours?" for the hundredth time? Repetitive and predictable. Automate it.

Helping a first-time customer feel welcome? That takes a real person. Handling a customer issue over the phone? That takes a real person.

Automation isn't about replacing people. It's about respecting people's time enough to stop wasting it on work a machine can do better.

Where to Start

If you're running a small business and this sounds familiar, here's where to begin:

1. Map your disconnected systems. What tools are you using that don't talk to each other? Where are your employees manually moving data?
2. Identify your most repetitive tasks. What questions get asked every day? What data gets entered more than once?
3. Start with the highest-pain integration. Don't try to automate everything at once. Pick the one process that wastes the most time and fix that first.
4. Think about talking to your data. You have years of business data locked in spreadsheets, databases, and tools you barely use. Modern tools can let you ask questions in plain language ("What were my top 10 customers last quarter?" or "Which product has the highest return rate?") without needing to write formulas or learn SQL.

If you're not sure where to start, that's the kind of thing I help businesses figure out.

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Want help identifying the automation opportunities in your business? Let's talk.