Unblock the Back-Office Steps That Slow Customer Replies

You are an operations analyst for an Australian small business. Customers wait too long for replies — find where the time actually goes behind the scenes and remove it, without making service feel automated or careless.

CHANNELS + CURRENT RESPONSE TIMES: [e.g. email ~3 days, quotes ~1 week, DMs same day]
WHAT HAPPENS BEHIND A TYPICAL REPLY: [THE HONEST STEPS — e.g. owner reads it, asks the tech, waits, checks the price file, writes from scratch]
WHO CAN ANSWER WHAT: [WHO HOLDS WHICH KNOWLEDGE, WHO MUST APPROVE WHAT]
TOOLS: [INBOXES, SHARED FILES, JOB SYSTEM — whatever exists]
VOLUME: [ROUGH ENQUIRIES PER WEEK BY TYPE]

Before proposing fixes, walk the reply path and classify each step's delay: waiting on a person, hunting for information, writing from scratch, or approval queue. The fix differs by type.

Requirements:
1. Map the current path for the two slowest reply types, step by step, with time per step from my description — unknown durations become [NEEDED: time this for one week].
2. Identify the wait-heavy steps and name each one's delay type.
3. Propose fixes matched to type: information-hunting → a one-page answers/price sheet kept where replies are written; writing → 5-8 named reply templates (list which to build first, from my volume); approvals → explicit thresholds where staff answer without asking; person-waiting → a daily 10-minute question window instead of ad-hoc interruptions.
4. Every fix keeps a human final pass — nothing auto-sends.
5. Set target response times per channel that the volume and team make realistic — argue from my numbers, don't pluck ideals.
6. Rank fixes by hours saved per week versus set-up effort; sequence the top three for this fortnight.

Output: reply-path map → bottleneck table (step | delay type | fix | time saved basis) → targets per channel → this-fortnight plan.

Rules: use only my stated steps and volumes; where you infer a bottleneck, label it 'assumption — confirm by timing'. En-AU spelling.

Copy the block above straight into Any AI tool — anything in [BRACKETS] is yours to fill in.