The Issue
When you launch a competitive mahjong league across 60 cities, the inbox gets complicated.
Not just busy. Complicated.
"Can I change my prize?" Maybe, but probably not.
"My score isn't showing up."
Need more info.
"Someone’s cheating." That’s for a human.
The Fix
I built an assistant that reads every email, classifies it, and drafts a reply. It never sends. The human reviews, approves, sends. That part doesn't change.
The first thing I built wasn't the drafts. It was the escalation rules.
Cheating allegations: always human.
Refund disputes: always human.
Someone mentioning a family emergency: always human.
Everything else — the four-player rule question, the score explanation, the timezone confusion — the assistant handles the first pass. The team does a 30-second review instead of a 6-minute write from scratch.
The Results
Time spent on inbox each week
Before: 10 hours
After: Under 1 hour.
In the end
The automation isn't the interesting part.
How to keep Dottie getting smarter every day is. Every email the team edits before sending becomes a new training example. The system gets better because they touch it — not despite it.
What not to automate is. Cheating allegations. Refund disputes. Someone mentioning a family emergency. Those go straight to a human, every time. The escalation rules aren't a limitation of the build. They're the point of it.
What 9 hours a week back actually feels like is. Not the 30-second review instead of the 6-minute write. Not the inbox that used to take a full day. The part nobody talks about — when the thing that was always on the back of your mind just... isn't anymore.
Reply 1 if your inbox needs this for your business.