Log the inbound press inquiry the hour it lands, resolve who the sender actually is, route it to a named duty officer with the clock it started, and hold the answer for them.
Take in the message from the press inbox, the switchboard note or the media form, and stamp the hour.
02
Resolve who the sender is, not what the byline claims: 243.100(b)(1) lists recipients, not trades.
Reason
03
Classify by subject matter, because a question about an unapproved use has to leave the press office.
04
Hold the stated deadline apart from the statutory clocks; EU and UK MAR now diverge on Article 17.
05
Hand the inquiry to a named duty officer, with the sender, the hour and the subject travelling with it.
Decide
06
Escalate an inquiry that evidences a leak, because MAR Art. 17(7) can end a lawful delay.
07
Acknowledge receipt to the sender — who now holds it, and by when — and stop at the receipt.
Out
08
Retain the message, the routing, the escalation and the words that went back, filed under the sender.
09
Write back into case records only inside the approval boundaries agreed during implementation.
→Product statement
Logging, sender resolution, routing and escalation belong to the agent. The answer belongs to a named officer, who approves the words before they go back.
Example workflow
One inquiry, inbox to answer
AgentHuman
1Inquiry receivedPress inbox, switchboard note, media form or a message sent straight to a spokesperson
2Sender and subject resolvedThe address, the outlet, the prior contacts, the subject matter and the hour it arrived
3Routing proposedThe desk, the duty officer, the clocks in play and the routing confidence
4Controls appliedRecipient-category checks, subject-matter checks, delay-register checks and routing confidence
No human action required
Stages 1 to 4 run unaided, and nothing goes back to the sender at any of them — the agent is routing, and the officer lane opens at the confidence gate.
5DecisionSplits at the confidence gate
Confident routing
Goes to the named duty officer.
Anything low-margin
Abstains to the press-office lead first.
Officer review
The inquiry is held with its sender record, the clocks it touches and the routing confidence.
Answer · Reassign · Escalate
Answered — by the named officer▼
6Case and contact records updatedOnly where write access and the records policy permit it
7Outcome evaluatedRouting correctness, reassignments, queue dwell and what the officer had to add
Reassignments
Each reassignment made in review is counted in the evaluation.
What should not run autonomously
Human approval stays in control
Outside the boundary — human approval required8 items
Answering a reporter on the record.
Deciding whether a delay is still lawful.
Judging who the sender is under the rule.
Confirming, denying or declining to comment.
Automation boundaryAgent acts unaided
✓Log the inquiry and stamp the hour it arrived.
✓Resolve the sender against the covered-recipient list before routing.
✓Hand it to the named duty officer and record the hand-off hour.
✓Acknowledge receipt, and name who now holds it.
Nothing goes back to a reporter except from a named officer, inside the agreed boundaries.
Deciding an inquiry is a records request.
Telling a reporter what the company will say.
Reviving an approved line for a new inquiry.
Changes to routing, retention or the rota.
Example output
One inquiry, annotated
This serves a press office that may have to reconstruct who was asked what and when, years later; in In re E.ON AG (Rel. 34-43372, 28 September 2000) the inquiry volume and the approval chain both sat in the SEC order.
Inquiry record · single messageIllustrative example
Sender
Asked
Arrived
Logged from
Confidence
Held for
Freelance contributor, trade weekly
Whether a supplier contract was cancelled
Thursday, 16:41
Press inbox header
Unanswered, routed
The duty press officer, by name
As receivedTaken from the message and the header beneath it, and nothing on this side is the wording of the agent.
What the intake holdsMessage headerSwitchboard notePrior contact log
Why it routed hereSubject matter decides the desk, not the trade the sender follows.
ActionRouteReassignEscalate to the officer
What the score decidesBelow the configured threshold the inquiry abstains and reaches the press-office lead first.
Value
Where AI adds value
The same four claims, placed at the point in the workflow where each one applies.
Where the value landsValue 01 – 04
Each inbound inquiryFrom the inbox that received it
03Routing
Resolve the sender
The agent does not settle who a sender is under the securities rules; it records the address, the outlet and the prior contacts, and hands that to the officer who must settle it.
01Approved path
A stranger started a clock
No statute started it. Since 5 June 2026 MAR Art. 17(4)(b) measures a lawful delay against the latest communication — and a holding line is a communication.
02Human review
What was searched for, and absent
No United States rule found turns an inbound press inquiry into a response deadline, and no sector rule found requires a press inquiry to be logged as such. Reg FD reaches securities professionals and holders, not reporters, and Gallagher v. Abbott (7th Cir. 2001) holds a firm may keep silent.
04Build an evidence trail
The inquiry, the hour it arrived and the spokesperson it reached stay together.
Integrations
Typical integrations
Five system groups connect to the same agent. Which of them are in scope is decided in discovery.
Press inbox and switchboardShared press inbox · press line Web media form · voicemail log
Reporter and outlet recordsCRM · prior contact history Outlet, byline and past asks
Disclosure and legal recordsDelay registers · insider lists Prior outbound lines and their dates
Agent
Media inquiry triage
Reads the inquiry Routes and escalates Holds for the officer
Rota and case handlingDuty rota · press-office tickets Escalation paths and hand-off logs
A press-office reassignment figure can read clean while unfamiliar outlets and freelance senders carry most of the rework behind it. Nestack reports the rate by inquiry class, not only in total.
Slice performance — reported separately, not only in aggregateIllustrative example
Slice
Failure rate
Lift
Lift vs. threshold
Status
Unfamiliar outlets and freelancers
12.4%
3.7×
Review
Out-of-hours arrivals
8.8%
2.6×
Review
Multi-jurisdiction subjects
5.5%
1.6×
Watch
Named-desk regulars
2.5%
0.7×
Normal
Bar: reassignment-rate lift vs. named-desk baseline · scale 0–4.0× · tick marks the 2.0× review threshold2 of 4 slices over threshold
Evidence-linked improvement
What a reused line costs
A loop closes when the question that reached nobody before deadline is a standing case. That suite is what the next queue worked is measured against.
Improvement cycle · five stagesSwitchback — the path turns at Improve and returns at Learn
01Detect
Reassignment rate rises on unfamiliar senders.
02Diagnose
The inquiry that reached nobody until the reporter published is worked backwards until one cause is left standing.
03Improve
Number the acknowledgement; the inquiries that drove it are filed beneath it.
04Verify
A single unrouted inquiry case stops the whole queue closing.
05Learn
One case joins the suite, and one line joins the routing rules.
Learn → DetectThe return edge. The next queue is worked against a suite one case longer.
Typical build scope
Twelve workstreams across six weeks
The build scope read against the delivery timeline. Week structure follows the six-week plan — discovery, sources, routing workflow, evaluation, integration, then production validation and handover.
WorkstreamWeek 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6
01Inquiry-queue discovery and automation-boundary work.
02Inbox, switchboard and CRM assessment.
03Sender-resolution and subject-classification rules.
04Inquiry intake and logging.
05Sender resolution and routing logic.
06Confidence scoring and abstain routing.
07Duty-officer approval workflow.
08Inbox and rota integration.
09Routing and deadline cases.
10Guardrails and acknowledgement controls.
11Inquiry-trail instrumentation.
12Deployment, documentation and Agent Care handover.
12 workstreams · 6 weeks · bar shows the weeks a workstream is active — several run in parallelFinal scope and sequence confirmed in discovery
Engagement tiers
What each tier includes
Rows are the capabilities named in each tier's scope. Higher tiers include everything below them.
Capability✓ in scope · — not at this tierPilotOne inbox, one deskProductionProduction press-office workflowAdvancedMultiple desks / jurisdictions
Introduced at Pilot
Routing to your rota and rules✓✓✓
Named officer approval✓✓✓
Inbound-queue baseline✓✓✓
Introduced at Production
Reporting by inquiry class—✓✓
Officer review workflow in your systems—✓✓
Approved case write-back—✓✓
Inbox-and-rota integration—✓✓
Introduced at Advanced
Cross-border deadline rules——✓
Multi-desk escalation chains——✓
High inquiry volume——✓
Multi-desk escalation controls——✓
Build priceFrom $5,000From $8,000Custom quote
Final build priceConfirmed after discovery based on integrations, workflow complexity, inquiry volume, approval controls and deployment requirements.
Separate from buildBuild pricing is separate from recurring Agent Care, which covers managed monitoring, evaluations, incidents and verified improvements after launch.
What we need from you
What you bring, and what we build with it
Each input maps to a piece of build scope and a week in the delivery timeline.
You bringWe build with it
01Your press inbox and the desks behind it→Inquiry ingestion and hour stampingWeek 1
02Representative inbound inquiries, routine and awkward→Sender resolution, routing logic and the intake baselineWeek 2
03Your duty rota and the officers it names→Routing-rule mapping, rota binding and the automation boundaryWeek 1
04Access to relevant inboxes, APIs or exports→Inbox, switchboard and CRM assessment, then integration setupWeek 2
05Questions you would not want unanswered→Routing cases and the failure-mode roundWeek 4
06What no acknowledgement may concede→Confidence scoring, abstain routing, guardrails and release controlsWeek 3
07A named officer who answers the reporter→Duty-officer approval workflow, then pilot and production validationWeeks 5–6
Nothing else is requiredDeployment, documentation and Agent Care handover are ours.
Delivery timeline
Four phases across six weeks
Two of these phases do share week five, and no band was widened to make the column look tidier.
PhaseW1W2W3W4W5W6
DiscoveryW1
BuildW2 – W3
EvaluateW4 – W5
Pilot & LaunchW5 – W6
Week focusW1Queue discovery, routing-rule mapping and the automation boundaryW2Inbox and rota integration and the intake baselineW3Routing workflow, confidence logic and escalation controlsW4Evaluation suite, routing cases and failure-mode testingW5Rota integration, pilot inquiries and targeted correctionsW6One news cycle run under the press-office lead, then Agent Care handover
Reading the bandA bar sits on the weeks its own work is named in, and the week five overlap is real.
At the end of W6When the inquiry record validates, Agent Care picks the agent up.
DurationSix-week plan shown · typical delivery 4–6 weeks depending on scope confirmed in discovery.
Next step · Public Relations AI agent
Build an inquiry triage agent around the hour a stranger question lands.
Show us one week of your press inbox and the rota behind it. Veba had no comment available on day one and reached for it on day thirty-two; the days in between were a queue that worked. If nobody can say which desk held Thursday, the record is gone.
