Waiting on a reply — customer side
This Watch finds the conversations where you spoke last and nobody answered. It is one of the three Watches raising points in your Inbox today. In Settings → Workspace → Watches it sits under Follow-ups as FO-1.
What it watches for
A thread where the last message was yours and the other side has been silent longer than your workspace's reminder delay. That covers the silences that cost a promo shop the most:
- Feedback on a quote.
- Artwork or a proof approval.
- A customer decision on a supplier change.
- A deposit.
- A proof or a virtual sample a supplier owes you.
Scout raises one point per client, citing the thread that has been quiet the longest.
Why it matters
Nothing in a promo shop dies of a decision. Things die of silence — a proof nobody approved, a quote nobody answered, a deposit nobody sent — and each one is invisible because the last thing in the thread is your own message, which looks like work you already did. This Watch is the reason the Inbox is a living action item list rather than a pile of sent mail.
It books as Avoided on the Found ledger: the date that did not slip, the quote that did not go cold.
What it needs connected
- Required: a mailbox — Gmail or Microsoft 365 / Outlook.
- Helpful: a supplier feed, a CRM.
What the point looks like
A point is one item Scout raises with the proof behind it. Here is a real one from the demo workspace:
Nudge Maya Torres on the bandana proof today — Camp Canine · cutoff tomorrow 5 PM
The bandana proof v2 has waited on Maya for 3 days. Alpha Apparel locks art for the Aug 10 in-hands tomorrow (Fri) at 5:00 PM — one business day away. Maya approves Mon–Wed and is typically off-site Thu–Fri, so a morning nudge is the last good window before the date slips a week.
Evidence: the Gmail thread "Re: Bandana proof v2" — last message is yours, no reply since · Alpha Apparel's art-lock date, from their own email · a learned fact about Maya's approval days, confirmed by a person · business-day math to the cutoff.
Prepared by Scout: a three-sentence nudge you can copy, with Open in Gmail beside it.
The setting that tunes it
Reminder delay: 1 business day, 2 business days or 3 business days. The default is 2, and 3 is the maximum — past three business days a follow-up is not a reminder any more. This setting is shared with SI-2, supplier is waiting on us, so changing it in either place changes both.
The effectiveness report also prints a Confidence cap of 92 percent in this Watch's current settings. That is a fixed ceiling on how sure Scout will ever claim to be about a silence, and it is not something you set.
When it arrives
It is here. This is a second-wave Watch by catalogue order, but it was already built, so it is on and working. Its row in Settings shows an accuracy figure rather than Coming soon.
Good to know
- An out-of-office auto-reply is silence, not a reply. A thread does not stop counting because a robot answered it.
- A customer reply, an archive or a delete all end the silence — Scout will not tell you to chase somebody who already wrote back.
- You do not get five reminders about one account — one point per client, citing the oldest stalled thread.
- The example above is from the demo workspace, where the cast and the dates are authored. What the Watch detects in your own book is the silence itself: the last message was yours, and it is past the reminder delay.
- This is a reminder, so it does not close itself when the reply lands: mark it Handled when you have dealt with it, or Dismiss it with a note. See Working an item.
- Scout writes the follow-up; you send it. It never emails your customer.
- Personal mail stays personal. A thread that does not match a client, a job or a record in your book is not read into a point.