# Professional services enquiries

For advisory work the automatable part is the front of the conversation — understanding what is being asked, gathering what a person will need, and keeping the thread warm. The part that must not be automated is anything that commits the firm: scope, fee, timescale, and the professional judgement itself. Connect refuses the second set by design.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **Channels:** email, phone
- **In the app:** #/inbox, #/pipeline, #/knowledge, #/needs-you
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/use-cases/professional-services/

## What scoping looks like when nothing may be promised

A first enquiry to a professional firm usually contains half the information needed and one question the firm cannot answer yet. Connect handles that shape well because refusing is a first-class outcome rather than a failure: it answers what Knowledge supports, asks for what is missing, and escalates the rest with the reason attached.

| The enquiry contains | Handled | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| A description of the situation | Yes — recorded against the relationship | Capturing is not advising |
| A request for an indication of fees | Escalated | A fee is a commercial term; `safe_sales` refuses one Knowledge cannot support |
| A question about your process or timescales | Yes, if Knowledge states it | A stated process is a fact; an inferred timescale is a promise |
| A request for advice on their specific matter | Escalated | Professional judgement is the service; nothing here substitutes for it |
| Documents to look at | Read and summarised into the record | Reading is not opining |
| A request to engage | Escalated, with an opportunity opened | Engagement terms are a person decision |

## Reading what the client sends

Attachments arrive constantly in this work. Files attach by button, drop or paste and go through one file service both audiences share, over storage that is already scoped and under row-level security. Formats read with the standard library: PDF via its text layer or by the model when there is none, DOCX, XLSX, CSV and TSV, PPTX, images, TXT, MD and JSON.

**DOCTYPE and ENTITY declarations and zip bombs are refused**, which closes the two document tricks that turn an attachment reader into an incident. Connect can create and modify files as new versions, with provenance and audit, so a draft that came back amended has a history rather than a single mutable state.

> **Note** A relationship `story` scrubs names on the way out. That is deliberate; read the detail view when the specifics are the point.

## Keeping the matter moving

1. The enquiry becomes a Person, attached to a Company where one applies, with a lifecycle stage that says where it has reached.
2. What the client said they would send becomes a follow-up with a reason and a due time — the `task` channel where only a person can chase it.
3. An engagement in prospect becomes an opportunity with a value in minor units, moved through the stages with `raise_for_review` marking the ones somebody must look at.
4. After engagement, `onboarding_action` carries the post-sale steps and `open_case` carries anything that goes wrong, on the same person record.

Memory tiers matter more here than in most use cases. A client preference recorded at the contact tier outranks a channel-wide direction, which is how 'this client wants everything in writing' or 'never copy the assistant' survives a change of who is handling the matter.

## What a professional firm must not expect

- **Advice.** Nothing in Connect is professional advice and no page here claims accuracy of that kind. Grounded answers about your own published process are a different thing from an opinion on a client matter.
- **A conflict check.** Nothing in these sources documents one. Identity resolution recognises an existing relationship; it is not a conflicts database and should not be treated as one.
- **A recording of the call for the file.** Recording is foundation and is not enabled on the live carrier. The transcript and summary exist and are searchable; audio does not.
- **A certification to cite.** Connect holds none, and no page in this documentation asserts one.

## What it costs a firm

Low, and predictable, because this use case is inbox-led. Text replies are bounded by the daily allowance rather than priced per message, and file reading is part of the same work. The variable is voice: an initial consultation taken as a phone conversation is priced on audio tokens and runs to a thirty-minute ceiling, so a firm that funnels enquiries to a call has a different bill from one that funnels them to a form.

## Questions

### Will Connect give a client an indication of our fees?

No. A fee is a commercial term, and one Knowledge cannot support is refused and escalated to a person rather than estimated. If your published fee structure is a fact you are happy to state, put it in Knowledge and it becomes answerable; anything requiring judgement about a specific matter does not.

### Can it read the documents a client sends and tell me what is in them?

Yes — attachments are read and can be summarised into the record, with PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, CSV, images and plain text among the formats. Malformed documents carrying DOCTYPE or ENTITY declarations, and zip bombs, are refused rather than parsed.

### Does it check for conflicts of interest?

No, and it should not be relied on as though it did. Identity resolution will notice that an enquirer is already a relationship, which is useful but is not a conflicts check. Nothing in this documentation describes one.

## Related

- [A B2B sales team](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/use-cases/b2b-sales-team/)
- [Files and data in Connect](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/files-data/)
- [Communication you must be able to explain](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/use-cases/regulated-communication/)
- [Memory in Connect](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/memory/)
- [Why a sales agent should refuse to answer](https://connectbyjbrh.com/research/safe-refusals-in-sales/)
- [Relationships in Connect](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/relationships/)

## What this page is based on

- docs-source/sources/CHANNELS.md §6 — safe_sales and the pipeline
- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §9 — files, formats and versions
- docs-source/sources/CHANNELS.md §5 — relationships and the story view
- docs-source/sources/PHONE.md §12 — recording