We fired ourselves from customer support. It got faster.
For the first two weeks we answered every support email by hand. Then we let ONI run it. Response times halved.
The first two weeks
Every support email came to my inbox. I read them, thought about them, replied. Average response time: 4 hours. Highest: 19 hours, because I was asleep.
The theory
I told myself this was "being close to customers." It wasn't. It was a bottleneck shaped like a person.
The switch
We pointed ONI at the support inbox. Not to send replies — just to draft. Every inbound email gets read in the cycle after it arrives. ONI writes a reply, flags it.
The numbers after two weeks
- Average time to a drafted reply: 9 minutes. - Time until I clicked send: sometimes 9 minutes, sometimes 4 hours, median 38 minutes. - Replies I edited before sending: 61%. Of those, most edits were a single sentence. - Replies I wrote from scratch: 4%. These are the ones that mattered.
What changed
I went from being the support team to being the editor-in-chief. I touch every reply, but I don't compose every reply. The customer gets a faster, more coherent answer. I spend my time on the 4% that need me.
What I learned
Your inbox is not where your brain does its best work. Delegate the composing. Keep the judgment.