Three Questions Before You Hand a Job to an AI Agent: A Farnham Business Worksheet

Start with the Monday-morning pile

Open your inbox on a Monday and count what is waiting that a person did not need to write: booking enquiries, supplier replies, review responses, the post you meant to put out on Friday. The listings in this directory suggest how common that is. Of the 418 businesses here, 120 are cafes, pubs and restaurants, 53 are garages, about 100 are hair, beauty, nail and barber businesses, and 35 are estate agents. Very different days, very similar piles.

This is a worksheet more than an essay. Three questions, then a short list of jobs that tend to survive them, then a way to get one running.

Question one: does the job follow the same steps each time?

If you could write the steps on a card for a new starter, an AI agent can probably be given the same card. Replying to a table request, confirming a service slot, sending a viewing reminder: all of them have steps. Deciding whether to refuse a difficult customer does not, and should stay with you.

Question two: what is the worst thing it could send?

Be blunt. A wrong opening time is annoying. A wrong price or a promise about a refund is expensive. Sort your jobs by that worst case. Low-risk jobs can eventually send by themselves; the rest are drafted for your approval, every time.

Question three: where does the information live?

An agent is only as good as what it can see. Opening hours, a price list, last week's bookings and your usual wording all need to be written down somewhere it can reach. This is the dull part, and it is also where most of the value comes from.

Jobs that tend to pass all three

• Hospitality: answering booking and private-hire enquiries, writing the weekly specials post and email, drafting replies to reviews for you to edit.
• Garages and trades: collecting the details of a fault or a job from a first message, drafting the estimate, sending the "your car is ready" or "we're on our way" note.
• Salons and barbers: rebooking messages, gentle reminders, a reply to the "do you have anything Saturday?" message.
• Estate agents: viewing reminders, chasing a missing document, a weekly summary of where each enquiry stands.

You may spot a job of your own that is not on this list. That is normal; the list only shows the pattern.

Doing it beside someone

The sticking point is rarely the idea. It is writing the card, choosing the stop points and checking the first outputs. People who work on this with a person next to them tend to get further in an afternoon than they do in a month alone.

Dean Keating, who publishes this directory, offers a two-hour private session built around exactly that. Details, kept brief:

• Just you and Dean, for 2 hours.
• You choose two or three of your own jobs. Dean helps you build agents for them in Claude or ChatGPT while you watch and steer, using your real material.
• Your finished setup and prompts sit in your own account afterwards.
• It costs £397 including VAT and is for business use, so the buyer is a business.
• Zoom reaches anywhere in the UK. In person means his Waterlooville office or your premises in Hampshire and Surrey.

Dean is based in Horndean, Hampshire. He runs his web agency and his directory network on AI agents (more than 100 defined roles), working to one rule: the AI does the repeat work, a person sets the rules and approves what matters. Nothing here promises a saving; that depends on what you decide to hand over. The booking page shows the live date, handles payment through Stripe, and Dean confirms the time afterwards.

Before you decide, read his profile on this site, or the guide to starting with AI as a small business.

About this guide

Farnham Direct is published by Dean Keating, and the session above is his own product. So this page is a labelled advertisement from the publisher, not a neutral review and not a paid placement.