Free guide · Reel 09
Claude reads every new email, gives it a label, flags emergencies straight away and drafts replies to simple questions, while you stay the one who presses send.
Your best customer emails at 7am: water pouring through the ceiling. You are on a job, and you see it at lunch. By then they have called someone else.
Picture a plumbing and heating firm in Manchester: three vans, one shared inbox. Claude reads each new email and gives it a label: emergency, quote, booking or billing. Supplier newsletters and SEO pitches get no label at all. Every 30 minutes it checks again, and a burst pipe or a broken boiler reaches the owner's phone at once.
Simple questions, like opening hours or the call-out fee, get a draft reply written from the firm's own FAQ. It never presses send. You read, tweak and send in seconds.
Plumbers, electricians, locksmiths, cleaners: any business where one missed email is a lost job.
Two or more people answer the same address and nobody is sure who saw what.
This guide uses Gmail. Outlook works the same way if you connect it instead.
You need a paid Claude plan and a Gmail (or Google Workspace) inbox. Set aside 30 minutes for the first run.
First the skill, then the setup prompt that fills it in with you. Swap everything in [brackets] for your own details, or let the setup prompt do it.
--- name: inbox-triage description: Use when I ask to "triage my inbox", "sort my email", or when a scheduled task runs inbox triage. Reads new customer emails in Gmail, labels each one, flags emergencies, and writes draft replies for simple questions. Never sends, deletes or archives anything. --- # Inbox triage ## When to use - I type "triage my inbox" or "sort my email". - A scheduled task asks you to run inbox triage. ## Business facts (edit these) - Business: [Firm name], [what you do] in [town]. - Opening hours: [hours]. Out-of-hours emergency number: [number]. - Call-out fee: [price]. Areas we cover: [areas]. - FAQ: [paste your 5 to 10 most common questions with the exact answers] ## Never answer (always leave for me) Refunds. Complaints. Legal threats or anything mentioning a solicitor. Anything about money already paid. [Add your own.] ## Steps, in this order 1. In Gmail, search: in:inbox newer_than:2d -label:Triaged 2. Read each email. Skip anything already labelled Triaged. 3. Give it exactly ONE label: - 1-Emergency: water leaking, burst pipe, no heating or hot water, gas smell, anything happening right now at a property. - 2-Quote: asking for a price or an estimate for a job. - 3-Booking: wants to book, move or cancel a visit. - 4-Billing: invoices, payments, receipts. - 0-Owner: matches the Never answer list. This beats every other label. - No label: supplier newsletters, sales pitches, SEO offers, spam. Leave them as they are. 4. Gas smell: label 1-Emergency and put "GAS: tell them to call the gas emergency line now" at the top of your summary. 5. For 3-Booking and simple questions: write a DRAFT reply using only the Business facts above. If the answer is not in the facts, do not draft. Write "needs you" in the summary instead. 6. Never draft a reply to anything labelled 0-Owner or 1-Emergency. Those are mine. 7. Add the label Triaged to every email you read, so the next run skips it. 8. Finish with a summary in this order: Emergencies (sender, address if given, one line), Owner-only, Drafts waiting for me, Everything else (count only). ## Hard rules - Never press send. Never delete, archive or mark as read. - Never promise a time, a price or a refund that is not in the Business facts. - If a label is missing in Gmail, create it. If you cannot, tell me which one. - Not sure which label? Pick the more urgent one and say why in the summary.
Help me set up inbox triage for my business. Work one step at a time and wait for me after each step. 1. Check you can read my Gmail. If not, tell me exactly where to connect it. 2. Interview me for the Business facts in the inbox-triage skill: hours, call-out fee, areas, out-of-hours number and my 5 to 10 most common customer questions with my real answers. One question at a time. 3. Ask me what you must never answer, and add it to the Never answer list. 4. Show me the finished skill text so I can check it. 5. Run it once on my last 2 days of email as a test. Show me the summary only, and list any email you were unsure about.
Write down what it must never answer.
Refunds, complaints, legal threats. One line in the skill makes sure those always land with you, flagged red, and never get a cheerful automatic draft.
It drafts. You send.
The skill never sends, deletes, archives or marks anything as read. Your inbox stays exactly as it was, just sorted.
10 Next step
The next guide turns a sales call into a ready proposal while it is still fresh.