An architecture practice's inbox is an unusual thing. The enquiries are high value, they arrive infrequently, and most of them are not viable.
Someone wants a loft conversion in a borough you do not work in. Someone has a budget that would not cover the drawings. Someone is a tenant rather than an owner. Someone wants free advice about whether their neighbour can build that. And occasionally, in among it, is a project worth having.
Sorting them takes an architect, because nobody else can tell the difference. Which means the scarcest resource in the practice is spent reading emails.
Five answers that sort the pile
The qualifying set is short and almost entirely uncontroversial to ask:
What kind of project. New build, extension, refurbishment, conversion, commercial fit-out. Immediately tells you whether it is your work.
Do they own the site or property. Tenants and prospective purchasers are a different conversation, and sometimes not a conversation at all.
Where is it. Location determines the planning authority, travel, and whether you have relevant precedent.
Rough budget for the build. The single most useful figure, and the one people most expect to be asked once it is framed as scoping.
Timeline, and what is driving it. A purchase completing in eight weeks is different from an idea forming.
Add whether there is existing planning history or a measured survey, and an architect reading the enquiry knows within thirty seconds whether to engage.
Asking about money without awkwardness
Architects are often reluctant to raise budget early, partly because clients frequently do not know and partly because it feels transactional before a relationship exists.
A chat window handles it better than a person can. Framed as "roughly what build budget are you working with, so I can point you at the right sort of project", it reads as scoping. And people answer machines more honestly than they answer professionals they are hoping to impress.
Where the answer is unrealistic, an honest response does more good than a polite meeting. Explaining what a project of that type typically costs to build, and that the design fee sits on top, sends people away better informed and occasionally brings them back a year later with a real budget. It certainly generates more goodwill than an hour-long conversation ending in silence.
Planning, and where to stop
Planning is the subject enquirers most want to discuss and the one where a bot must be most careful.
It can explain the general process: what an application involves, roughly how long a decision takes, what pre-application advice is, the difference between full permission and permitted development in general terms, what listed status broadly means, what happens if something is refused.
It must not say whether a specific proposal needs consent, whether it is likely to be approved, or what a particular authority will accept. Those depend on the site, the local plan, constraints, and precedent, and a confident wrong answer here creates a client expectation that costs the practice its credibility when corrected.
The right response is that it depends on the site and the local authority, that this is exactly what an initial assessment covers, and here is how to get one.
Fees deserve publishing
Architecture is one of the professions where fee opacity actively costs enquiries.
Homeowners have no frame of reference. Faced with no information, many assume it is unaffordable and never make contact. Publishing the structure, whether that is a percentage of build cost, stage-based fees, or hourly rates, with an example of what a typical project involves, converts people who would otherwise self-select out.
Let the bot state it plainly when asked, and let it explain what the fee covers at each stage, because the other common misconception is that the fee is for drawings alone.
The stages nobody understands
There is a large body of process confusion that a bot can clear at no cost.
What happens between an initial meeting and a planning submission. What building regulations approval is and why it is separate. What a party wall surveyor does. Who appoints the contractor. What happens if costs come back over budget at tender. Whether the architect is involved during construction.
Answering these makes the practice look like the one that explains things, which for a service most people buy once in their lives is a genuine differentiator.
What to capture and where to send it
Gather the five qualifiers plus contact details and any documents they mention having. Route by project type if the practice splits residential and commercial, because they are different conversations with different people.
Flag anything with a completion or planning deadline, since those are live and time-sensitive.
Configuring it
Point it at your project pages, sectors, fee information, and any process guides you publish. Upload anything explaining the work stages, since that answers a disproportionate share of questions.
Write the planning boundary first. Then test it with the questions homeowners actually ask, which are specific and hopeful: "can I build a two-storey extension without permission?" is the phrasing, and the bot must not answer it.
The measure
Track the proportion of enquiries an architect can dismiss or accept without a call. That is the time returned.
Then watch how many progress to a paid initial assessment. If the qualifiers are working, that ratio rises, because the enquiries reaching a conversation are the ones that were always going to be worth having.