Automating Lead Capture and Follow-Up for a Growing SME
Using n8n to remove the "human bottleneck" from lead qualification and initial response.
Overview
This growing SME was a victim of its own marketing success. Their lead generation campaigns were working, but the internal team was drowning in the administration of handling the responses.
Speed is a competitive advantage. The founder knew that responding to a lead in 5 minutes vs 5 hours drastically improved conversion rates. However, achieving that manually required someone to be glued to their inbox 24/7.
They asked Montandon Ltd to help them automate this initial "handshake" without losing the personal touch or making the process feel robotic.
The Situation Before
The lead process was entirely manual. A lead form notification would arrive via email. A staff member would have to read it, open a spreadsheet, copy-paste the details (name, email, company, service interest), open their email client, find the right template, and send a reply.
This manual friction meant that leads coming in overnight or on weekends sat cold for hours or days. Worse, data entry errors were common—names were misspelled, or emails bounced because of a copy-paste mistake.
The team was spending 2-3 hours a day just on this "data shuffling." It was low-value work that distracted them from high-value client delivery.
The Approach
We approached this as an automation architecture challenge. We needed a reliable "middleware" that could catch data from lead sources, process it, store it, and act on it.
We selected n8n (a workflow automation tool) for this task. Unlike Zapier, n8n offered us granular control over the logic, allowing us to build complex routing rules and error handling that ensured 100% reliability.
The goal was "Invisible Automation." We wanted the customer to feel they had received a prompt, personal reply, and we wanted the internal team to see a neat, tidy row in their database, without anyone having to touch a keyboard.
The Build
We designed an n8n workflow that listened for webhooks from the lead forms. Upon receiving data, the workflow first validated it—checking that email addresses looked real and names were properly capitalized.
The workflow then checked the "Service Interest" field. Depending on what the customer wanted, n8n selected specific email copy that spoke directly to their problem, rather than a generic "Thanks for your email." This personalized email was sent immediately via their transactional email provider.
Finally, the clean, standardized data was injected into their master database. The team received a summary notification on Slack: "New Qualified Lead: [Name] interested in [Service]. Email sent. Data stored." All they had to do was click a button to view the record.
The Outcome
The "human bottleneck" has been removed. Leads are processed instantly, 24/7/365. A prospect enquiring at 11 PM on a Sunday gets the same immediate, professional response as one enquiring at 10 AM on a Tuesday.
The administrative overhead of lead handling dropped to near zero. The team reclaimed ~15 hours a week of focus time. Data quality is now consistent; every record is formatted correctly, making future reporting and analysis far easier.
This systems-led approach turned a chaotic influx of emails into a calm, orderly stream of potential business.
Lead Response
Copy-paste errors
Coverage
Weekly time saved
Why This Worked
This worked because we didn't try to use AI to pretend to be human. We used sensible logic to automate a transactional administrative task.
We prioritized reliability and data integrity. n8n provided the visual observability we needed to trust the system—we could see exactly where every piece of data went.
Services Delivered
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