Business systems · Case study
The whole conversation. One case.
Customer email, cases, documents and team workflow in one working environment.
Situation
A car rental business serves its customers by email. Each conversation turns into work for the team: promises to keep, documents to hold, and cases that pass from one person to another.
Challenge
The team needed every customer email held on its case, whoever picked it up.
That meant the customer's email, what has been promised, the documents and the team's work held together on the case they belong to, so a case reads the same whoever looks at it.
Our approach
We consolidated rather than added another tool, and brought the history across.
The work turned on the case: a customer's email becomes promises to keep, documents to hold and work that passes between people. We recommended consolidating rather than adding another tool, and bringing the existing history across so the team would start with its past, not an empty system. We then put the email and its case in one record and built the team's day around it: who owns a case and who it passes to, the documents it needs, an overview of what is open, waiting and overdue, and routine steps that run on their own.
- Email and case managementThe customer conversation and the case it belongs to are one record, not two systems to keep in step.
- Document handlingDocuments attach to the case they belong to and stay with it.
- Team coordinationAssignment, ownership and handover happen inside the case rather than in messages about it.
- Operational dashboardsWhat is open, what is waiting and where it sits: the same records seen from above.
- Workflow automationRoutine steps run on the system's own rules instead of on someone remembering them.
- History brought acrossOperational history was carried across from the previous tool rather than archived and abandoned.
How it works
One flow, start to finish.
Workflow
Select a stage to see what it does, what it receives and what it hands on.
Select a stage to see what it does, what it receives and what it hands on.
- Sources: Customer email arrives. Receives from: Nothing. Hands on to: Email and case management.
- Capture: Email and case management. The customer conversation and the case it belongs to are one record, not two systems to keep in step. Receives from: Customer email arrives. Hands on to: One case record.
- Capture: History brought across. Operational history was carried across from the previous tool rather than archived and abandoned. Receives from: Nothing. Hands on to: One case record.
- Record: One case record (Document handling). Documents attach to the case they belong to and stay with it. Receives from: Email and case management, History brought across. Hands on to: Team coordination, Operational dashboards.
- Work: Team coordination. Assignment, ownership and handover happen inside the case rather than in messages about it. Receives from: One case record, Workflow automation. Hands on to: Resolved, with the full history intact.
- Outcome: Resolved, with the full history intact. The team works each case in one place: the customer conversation, its documents and every action taken on it, with the day's work listed as open, waiting or overdue. Receives from: Team coordination. Hands on to: Nothing.
- Control: Operational dashboards. What is open, what is waiting and where it sits: the same records seen from above. Receives from: One case record. Hands on to: Nothing.
- Control: Workflow automation. Routine steps run on the system's own rules instead of on someone remembering them. Receives from: Nothing. Hands on to: Team coordination.
The day starts with a list of the work rather than an inbox: what is open, what is waiting on someone else, what is overdue. Opening a case gives the conversation, its documents and its history in one view, and the work (replying, assigning, attaching, closing) happens there. The overview is the same cases seen from above.
What changed · As at September 2026
The team works in one place.
The team works each case in one place: the customer conversation, its documents and every action taken on it, with the day's work listed as open, waiting or overdue.
In production and in daily use, with the existing operational history migrated in rather than left behind. Volumes, case counts and service levels are confidential.
For technical teams
Engineering decisions
How it was built.
Consolidate rather than add, and bring the existing operational history in, so the platform starts with the past inside it rather than empty and running alongside the thing it replaced.
The platform is organised around one operational record per case. Mail arrives and is attached to the case it belongs to; every action after that (assignment, document, status change, reply) is written against that same record, which is what makes a dashboard possible at all rather than a report someone assembles. The migration was built as a repeatable pass rather than a one-off import, so it could be re-run and checked against its source instead of trusted once.
Stack confidential