**Automated my friend's customer service in 3 hours. He just sent me this text: "I forgot what free time feels like"** My friend runs a small e-commerce business selling outdoor gear. Around 50 orders per day. Good business, but he had one major problem. He was spending 4-5 hours daily answering the same customer questions: * "Where's my order?" * "Do you ship internationally?" * "What's your return policy?" * "Is this item in stock?" Every. Single. Day. I work in AI automation and kept offering to help. He kept putting it off, thinking it would be complicated or expensive. Two weeks ago, I finally convinced him to let me set it up. **Here's what we did:** Set up an AI system that handles repetitive questions automatically. It pulls answers from his FAQ and order tracking system. He reviews a daily summary each morning (takes about 10 minutes). Complex issues or unhappy customers still get routed directly to him. **The results:** About 75% of his customer inquiries are now handled instantly, 24/7. He's gone from 4-5 hours of emails per day to about 30 minutes. Customer satisfaction actually improved because response times are faster. **The biggest lesson? The 80/20 rule applies here perfectly.** We tracked his emails for a week first. Turns out 80% of his questions fell into just 8 categories. Once we identified those patterns, the automation became simple. **If you're thinking about doing this, here's what actually matters:** Start by tracking your inquiries for 5-7 days. You'll likely find the same pattern - most questions are repetitive. Don't try to automate everything at once. Focus on the top 5-10 most common questions first. Always include an easy "talk to a human" option. People need to feel like they can escalate if needed. Test it with real customers before going all-in. We ran it alongside his normal process for 3 days first. The setup took 35hours because we kept it simple. He kept avoiding it because he assumed it would be this massive, complicated project. Now he's texting me photos of himself at dinner with his girlfriend at 7pm on a Tuesday. **What repetitive task in your business are you spending 4+ hours a week on that could probably be automated?**