Merlin

Situation

Every inbound enquiry cost a discovery meeting before anyone knew whether it was worth having, and a missed call was a missed client. The studio was spending its scarcest asset — senior time — qualifying strangers, and still handling one caller at a time.

Task

• Qualify inbound prospects without putting a person on the call.
• Never miss a caller, however many arrive at once.

Result

Callers are handled concurrently and qualify themselves in conversation, leaving with a briefing booked or a structured brief in the team's inbox. Nothing rings out, and senior time goes to calls already worth having.

My Contribution

• Framed the problem as qualification, not automation. The goal was never to replace discovery — it was to stop paying for discovery that shouldn't happen.
• Argued the case on coverage rather than novelty: a person answers one call and works one shift. The comparison that mattered was against the role, not against a chatbot.
• Split one product into two front doors once it was clear a cold prospect and a client with a spec want completely different conversations.
• Ruled that the agent doesn't get the last word on whether work happened, after a live call ended announcing a brief that was never submitted.
• Set the standard that a wrong booking costs more trust than a retry costs patience — so booking tools must prove they know the time before they can act.