SYSTEMS OPERATIONAL ALEJANDRO FRANCO · AUTOMATION ENGINEER SUNSHINE COAST, AU · GMT+10
SPEC / 00 — THE OFFER

Every enquiry answered in seconds. No lead slips through.

I build owned, AI-automated operations stacks for service businesses — instant branded lead response, a 24/7 AI receptionist that captures and books, and content that publishes itself — running on infrastructure you own, not a $97/month (+$97 AI add-on) subscription you rent.

GET A FREE AI LEAK AUDIT → READ THE CASE FILE
SPEC / 01

The system, traced live

This is what happens when a customer submits an enquiry on a site I've built — every step automatic, every step logged.

[00.000s] ENQUIRY RECEIVED form → serverless API (owned, $0/mo)
[00.180s] VALIDATED spam blocked · input checked · nothing silently dropped
[00.420s] CUSTOMER REPLY SENT branded auto-response — "we've got your enquiry"
[00.430s] TEAM ALERTED formatted lead notification → your inbox / phone
[00.610s] CRM-READY contact + source + details — synced to your CRM (optional)
[ day 2+ ] FOLLOW-UP SEQUENCE automatic, until they book or opt out
[ status ] ZERO LEADS LOST fail-safe: if any channel errors, the customer is told to call
SPEC / 02

Case file — replacing a $97/mo SaaS with an owned, AI-automated stack

The situation

A Sunshine Coast home-services business — my own, which I built this for first — was paying $97/month for an all-in-one SaaS (GoHighLevel), with its AI receptionist gated behind a further ~$97/month. Roughly $1,200–2,300+/year for a stack the business didn't own and would lose the day it stopped paying.

What I built

  • Owned website (Vercel) + serverless lead API — instant branded auto-reply, real-time owner alert, optional CRM sync, spam-blocked, and fail-safe so no lead is ever dropped
  • A grounded AI receptionist that answers 24/7, captures and books, and escalates price / complaint / hot leads to a human — never quotes a firm price. Passed a 22-scenario QA suite
  • An AI mockup tool: a customer uploads a room photo and gets an AI render of the product fitted (~12s, ~4¢, owner-approved before send)
  • A blog that writes and publishes itself weekly, then auto-deploys

The result

Recurring platform cost cut from $97/mo (+ optional $97/mo AI) to ~$0–15/mo — about $1,200–2,300+/year saved, with zero lock-in and full data ownership — while adding capabilities the SaaS never had. The whole stack is driven by one config file, so the same system re-stands for any service business that captures enquiries online.

Built production-grade

  • WAF rate-limiting on the lead API (20 req/60s → 429) — spam + cost-burn closed
  • Uptime monitor every 30 min across all sites + a synthetic lead-API probe, with alerting
  • Private version control, auto-deploy on publish, secrets in platform env — never a fragile script
STACK — Vercel · Resend · Cloudflare · Airtable (optional) · Claude · image-gen API  //  PLATFORM COST — ~$0–15/mo (was $97–194)  //  PROOF — live build + screenshots on request
READ THE FULL CASE STUDY →
SPEC / 03

What I build

SYS·A

Lead-response pipelines

Capture → instant branded reply → CRM → follow-up. The system above, fitted to your business.

SYS·B

AI receptionists & chatbots

Claude / GPT receptionists that answer 24/7, capture, book, and escalate hot / price / complaint to you — grounded in your real business knowledge, never quoting a firm price.

SYS·C

Workflow automation

n8n, Make, Zapier — bookings, invoicing, notifications, CRM sync. The repetitive work, removed.

SYS·D

CRM & integrations

Forms, email, SMS, calendars wired into one pipeline that doesn't drop things.

SYS·E

Owned serverless APIs

Custom Vercel functions replacing monthly SaaS fees with infrastructure you own.

SYS·F

GoHighLevel — in or out

Deep GHL experience: automation inside it, or a clean migration off it. I've done both.

SPEC / 04

Productised packages

STARTER — INSTANT LEAD REPLY
$500–1,000
AUD · fixed price · ~1 week
  • Enquiry form → optional CRM
  • Instant branded auto-reply
  • Team alert on every lead
  • Spam protection + fail-safe
PLUS — + AI RECEPTIONIST
$1,500–4,000
AUD · fixed price · 1–2 weeks
  • Everything in Starter
  • 24/7 AI receptionist — answers, captures, books
  • Escalates hot / price / complaint to you
  • Grounded in your knowledge · never a firm price
CANCEL-THE-SAAS MIGRATION
$2,500–6,000
AUD · fixed price · 2–4 weeks
  • Move off GoHighLevel / all-in-one SaaS
  • Owned site + lead pipeline + receptionist
  • Kill the $100–200/mo bill
  • You own everything — no lock-in
RETAINER — KEEP IT SHARP
$300–1,000
AUD / month
  • Uptime + rate-limit monitoring
  • Monthly optimisation
  • New automations as you grow
  • Priority response
SPEC / 05

The part nobody else offers: your data stays yours

Most automation vendors pipe your customer data through whatever cloud tool is convenient. I engineer data boundaries: sensitive details (names, phones, medical / financial identifiers) are detected and redacted before anything leaves your infrastructure, and every byte that does leave is written to an audit log you can open.

For businesses that handle sensitive client information — clinics, brokers, legal, finance — this is the difference between "we use AI" and "we use AI responsibly." Ask me about local-first AI: models that run on hardware in your office, with the cloud used only for what it's genuinely better at.

// egress-audit.jsonl — sample
{"task":"a4c9","sensitive":true,
 "redactions":["phone","medicare"],
 "path":"redact_escalate",
 "egress_bytes":110,
 "latency_ms":2410}
// 110 bytes left the building.
// the customer record never did.
SPEC / 06

Tell me what's slipping through your cracks

One short call. You describe the outcome — faster replies, fewer missed leads, less manual admin — and I'll tell you exactly what I'd build, what it costs, and how long it takes.