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SMB Automation Guide

Top 5 Hermes Agent Automations Every Canadian Small Business Should Set Up First

Stop drowning in email, chasing invoices, and forgetting follow-ups. These five automations save 10+ hours a week — and each takes under an hour to set up with Hermes Agent.

The five automations (ranked by impact)

  1. Email triage, replies & follow-ups — reclaim 5+ hours/week
  2. Invoice & payment follow-ups — get paid faster, automatically
  3. Customer review requests — build your 5-star reputation on autopilot
  4. Lead intake & qualification — never let a lead go cold again
  5. Daily & weekly business reports — know your numbers without logging into 5 tools

Each automation follows the same pattern: trigger → Hermes Agent → deliver. You set the trigger, Hermes does the work, you review the output.

1. Email triage, replies & follow-ups

⏱ Time saved: 5–10 hours/week

The problem

You start Monday morning with 47 unread emails. By the time you've sorted, replied, and flagged follow-ups, it's lunchtime. Repeat daily. For most small business owners, email is the single biggest time thief.

What Hermes Agent does

  • Triages your inbox each morning: urgent (needs your attention today), important (needs a reply this week), and everything else (newsletters, receipts, noise).
  • Drafts replies to common questions: pricing inquiries, service area questions, scheduling requests. You review before sending.
  • Flags dead conversations: if a client hasn't replied in 4 days and the thread matters, Hermes drafts a polite nudge.
  • Summarizes long threads: "Here's what happened in the Smith project email chain since Friday."

Setup in Hermes Agent (under 30 minutes)

  1. Connect Google Workspace (Gmail) via the setup wizard.
  2. Create a skill: "Each morning at 8 AM, scan my inbox. Categorize every unread email as Urgent / Important / Other. For pricing or scheduling questions, draft a reply. List threads where I haven't responded in 3+ days."
  3. Schedule it as a cron job: daily at 8 AM, deliver to your phone via Telegram or WhatsApp.
  4. Review the morning digest over coffee. Approve drafts, delete noise.
💡 Pro tip: Start with just the triage digest (step 2). Add auto-draft replies gradually as you build trust in the system. You can always tell Hermes "don't draft replies — just flag them" and add drafting later.

2. Invoice & payment follow-ups

⏱ Time saved: 2–3 hours/week + faster payments

The problem

You sent the invoice. Two weeks pass. You're not sure if they saw it, forgot it, or are ignoring it. Every follow-up email feels awkward. Meanwhile, your cash flow tightens. For Canadian SMBs, the average invoice is paid 12 days late — and 20% of invoices are never paid at all without follow-up.

What Hermes Agent does

  • Detects unpaid invoices from your Google Sheet or accounting system.
  • Sends automated reminders at polite intervals: Day 1 (confirmation), Day 7 (friendly reminder), Day 14 (firm follow-up), Day 30 (escalation notice).
  • Escalates to you at Day 30+: "These 3 invoices are now past due. Want me to draft the escalation or would you prefer to call?"
  • Logs every touchpoint so you have a paper trail if things get legal.

Setup in Hermes Agent (under 45 minutes)

  1. Create a Google Sheet with columns: Client, Invoice #, Amount, Date Sent, Due Date, Status, Last Follow-up.
  2. Write a cron job: "Every weekday at 9 AM, check the invoice tracker. For any invoice where Status ≠ Paid and today is Day 1/7/14/30 since Date Sent, draft a follow-up email. Update Last Follow-up date."
  3. Hermes drafts the email. You review and approve from your phone.
  4. When a payment arrives, mark it Paid in the sheet — Hermes stops the reminders.
💡 Pro tip: Use the persistent memory feature so Hermes remembers each client's tone — friendly for longtime customers, more formal for corporate accounts.

3. Customer review requests

⏱ Time saved: 1–2 hours/week + 2–3× more reviews

The problem

You do great work. Your customers are happy. But only 1 in 10 leaves a review — usually the one who had a bad experience. Meanwhile, your competitor with 87 Google reviews is eating your lunch in local search results. For local service businesses, reviews are literally the difference between thriving and surviving.

What Hermes Agent does

  • Detects completed jobs from your calendar, CRM, or project tracker.
  • Waits the right amount of time: 24 hours after job completion (not 5 minutes — that feels pushy).
  • Sends a personalized request via SMS or email: "Hi [Name], thanks for trusting us with [project]. If everything looks great, a quick Google review helps other [city] homeowners find us: [link]. No pressure either way. — [Your Name]"
  • Follows up once after 5 days if no review. Then stops — two asks max.
  • Monitors your review pages and alerts you to new reviews (good or bad) so you can respond quickly.

Setup in Hermes Agent (under 30 minutes)

  1. Connect your calendar or job tracker (Google Calendar, Google Sheets, or any tool Hermes can read).
  2. Create a cron job: "Every day at 10 AM, find jobs completed yesterday. For each, draft a personalized review request based on the job details. Deliver the drafts for my approval."
  3. Connect your messaging gateway (SMS or WhatsApp) for sending.
  4. Set a second cron: "Every day at 10 AM, check for jobs completed 6 days ago that haven't received a review. Send one follow-up. If still no review, stop."
💡 Pro tip: Hermes personalizes each request with the actual job details ("your kitchen renovation," "the furnace repair"), which doubles response rates compared to generic "leave us a review" blasts.

4. Lead intake & qualification

⏱ Time saved: 3–5 hours/week + 30–50% more conversions

The problem

A lead fills out your contact form at 9 PM on a Saturday. You see it Monday morning. By then, they've already booked your competitor who called back in 8 minutes. Research shows you're 10× more likely to convert a lead if you respond within 5 minutes. Nobody can do that manually — but Hermes can.

What Hermes Agent does

  • Instant acknowledgment: lead submits a form → Hermes sends an auto-reply within 30 seconds: "Hi [Name], thanks for reaching out! I'm [Your Name]'s automated assistant. I've let them know you're interested in [service]. They'll follow up personally within [timeframe]. In the meantime, here's a quick overview of how we work: [link]."
  • Lead research: Hermes looks up their company, checks their website, finds relevant context — so when you call back, you already know who they are.
  • Qualification questions: If the form was light on details, Hermes asks 2–3 qualification questions by email and parses the responses into a summary.
  • Urgency flags: "This lead mentioned a deadline next week — prioritize."
  • CRM logging: Everything gets saved so you have a complete lead history.

Setup in Hermes Agent (under 45 minutes)

  1. Set up a webhook endpoint that fires when your contact form is submitted.
  2. Create a skill: "When a new lead comes in, immediately send an acknowledgment email. Then research the company and person. Draft a summary: who they are, what they want, any deadlines, suggested questions for the first call."
  3. Route leads to your phone via Telegram/SMS: "New lead: Sarah from Acme Corp. Needs kitchen renovation quote before June 10. Full brief in your email."
  4. Log everything to a Google Sheet for tracking.
💡 Pro tip: The auto-acknowledgment alone is a game-changer. Even if you can't call back for 2 hours, the lead knows they were heard — and Hermes already qualified them so your callback is 10× more productive.

5. Daily & weekly business reports

⏱ Time saved: 3–4 hours/week

The problem

To know how your business is doing, you log into: Google Analytics, your bank, your invoicing tool, your email, your CRM, your project tracker, your social media accounts. By the time you've checked everything, an hour is gone — and you do this every. single. day. Or worse, you don't check at all and fly blind.

What Hermes Agent does

  • Daily morning digest (delivered to your phone at 7 AM): "Good morning. Yesterday: 3 new leads, 2 invoices paid ($4,200), 1 project completed, 12 website visitors (up 20%), 1 new Google review (5 stars). Today: 2 calls scheduled, 1 invoice due. The Johnson project needs your approval on the estimate."
  • Weekly summary (every Monday): Revenue vs target, leads by source, top-performing content, cash position, overdue items, team highlights.
  • Anomaly detection: "Website traffic dropped 40% yesterday — possible tracking issue or actual drop. Worth checking."

Setup in Hermes Agent (under 60 minutes)

  1. Connect your data sources: Google Analytics, Google Sheets (invoicing), Gmail, calendar.
  2. Create a daily cron job: "Every morning at 7 AM, pull yesterday's numbers from all connected sources. Generate a digest: leads, revenue, completed work, website traffic, reviews, and today's calendar. Flag anything unusual."
  3. Create a weekly cron job: "Every Monday at 8 AM, compile the week's numbers into a summary. Compare to last week and monthly targets. List top 3 priorities for the week ahead."
  4. Deliver both to your phone.
💡 Pro tip: Start with just 3 metrics (new leads, revenue received, tasks completed). Add more data sources over time. A 3-metric report you actually read beats a 20-metric dashboard you ignore.

How to get started (today)

Each of these automations follows the same three-step pattern:

  1. Connect your tools — Google Workspace, messaging platforms, your tracking sheets. Hermes comes with built-in integrations for all of them.
  2. Write the prompt — describe what you want in plain English. Hermes is designed to understand natural instructions, not code.
  3. Schedule it — set a cron job so it happens automatically. Review the output for the first few days, then let it run.

Pick the automation that hurts the most right now. Set it up in one sitting. Let it run for a week. Then add the next one. Within a month, you've reclaimed 10+ hours a week — and your business runs smoother than it did with a full-time assistant.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to be technical to set these up?

No. Hermes Agent installs with one command and includes a setup wizard that walks you through connecting your tools. Writing automation prompts is like writing instructions to a smart assistant — plain English, not code. If you can describe what you want in a paragraph, you can set up a Hermes automation.

What if Hermes makes a mistake?

Every automation includes a human review step. Hermes drafts emails, but you approve them before they're sent. Hermes flags priorities, but you decide. The system is designed to prepare work for you, not replace your judgment. Start with review-heavy workflows and remove review steps gradually as trust builds.

Can these automations work with my existing tools?

Hermes Agent integrates with Google Workspace (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Sheets), Apple Notes and Reminders, any messaging platform (Telegram, WhatsApp, SMS, Slack, Discord), and any tool with an API. If your tools live in spreadsheets, email, or calendars, they work with Hermes.

How much does this cost?

Hermes Agent is open source and free. You pay only for the AI model provider you choose (typically $20–50/month for business-level usage) and any platform-specific costs (SMS credits, etc.). The five automations described here would run comfortably within a $30/month model budget.

What about privacy? My client data is sensitive.

Hermes Agent runs locally on your machine. Your data doesn't go to a third-party cloud unless you explicitly route it through a model provider (for the AI processing). You control which data touches which service. For Canadian businesses, this means you can keep PIPEDA-covered data on your own infrastructure and only send what's necessary for processing.

Which automation should I set up first?

Start with #1 (email triage) if you spend more than 2 hours a day in your inbox. Start with #2 (invoicing) if you have more than 5 outstanding invoices at any time. Start with #5 (reports) if you feel like you're flying blind. Pick whichever one causes you the most daily stress — that's the one that'll give you the biggest quality-of-life improvement.

Set up your first automation today

Hermes Agent installs in one command. Pick one automation from this guide and have it running before lunch.

Install Hermes Agent →

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