How to Automate Quote Request Follow-Up with Make (Free Plan)

In A Small Business Lead Follow-Up Workflow You Can Automate, we described a five-step process for handling new enquiries: capture, confirm, record, assign, and remind. This guide builds the record, assign, and remind steps in Make, using a Google Form and a Google Sheet. We built and tested it on Make's free plan while writing this post.

Disclosure: this post contains an affiliate link to Make. If you sign up for a paid plan through it, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The free plan is enough to follow this guide.

What the workflow does

When someone submits your quote request form, their answers land in a Google Sheet. Make then checks the sheet and, for each new enquiry, fills in three tracking columns:

• Status: set to "New" so you can see what still needs a reply.
• Owner: the person responsible for the next step.
• Follow-up date: two days after the enquiry is processed, so nothing sits unanswered.

A person still reviews each request and writes the reply. The automation only handles the record-keeping that is easy to forget on a busy day.

What you need

• A Google account (a free @gmail.com account works).
• A free Make account (affiliate link).
• About 20 minutes.

Ready to try it? Create a free Make account here (affiliate link), then follow the steps below.

Step 1: Create the enquiry form

In Google Forms, create a form with three questions: Your name (short answer), Your email (short answer), and What would you like a quote for? (paragraph). Ask only for what you need to reply.

Then open the Responses tab, click Link to Sheets, and create a new spreadsheet. Publish the form so it can accept responses.

Step 2: Add tracking columns to the sheet

Open the linked spreadsheet. After the form's columns, add three headers: Status, Owner, and Follow-up date. Make will fill these in. Do not rename or reorder the form's own columns.

Step 3: Connect Google Sheets to Make

In Make, go to Credentials, click +, choose Google Sheets, and sign in with the Google account that owns the sheet. Read the permission screen before you approve it. You can remove this access later from your Google Account security settings.

Tip: if the Google sign-in window does not appear, check whether your browser is blocking pop-ups for make.com.

Step 4: Add the trigger, "Watch New Rows"

Create a new scenario. Add Google Sheets > Watch New Rows, choose your connection, then select the responses spreadsheet and the Form responses 1 sheet. Leave Table contains headers set to Yes.

When Make asks where to start, choose All if the sheet is new, or Choose manually if it already has old rows you do not want processed.

Step 5: Add the action, "Update a Row"

Click the + after the trigger and add Google Sheets > Update a Row. Select the same spreadsheet and sheet, then fill in:

• Row number: click the field and choose Row number from the Watch New Rows module.
• Status (E): type New
• Owner (F): type the name of whoever handles enquiries.
• Follow-up date (G): paste {{formatDate(addDays(now; 2); "YYYY-MM-DD")}}

Leave the form's columns (Timestamp, name, email, and request) empty. In our test, empty fields kept their original values.

Step 6: Test with sample information

Save the scenario, submit a test enquiry through your form using made-up details, then click Run once in Make. Both modules should show a green tick.

Check the sheet. The original answers should be untouched, and the three tracking columns should be filled in.

Step 7: Choose a schedule that fits the free plan

Make's free plan includes 1,000 credits a month, up to two active scenarios, and a minimum interval of 15 minutes between scheduled runs. Each module run uses credits, and a trigger that checks for new rows can use a credit even when it finds nothing. Checking every 15 minutes, all day, every day, can use up the monthly allowance on its own.

For a small business, a few checks during working hours is usually enough. In the scenario's schedule settings, choose specific times, such as 9:00, 12:00, and 15:00 on weekdays, and turn the scenario on. If you need faster responses or more enquiries, compare the paid plans and current credit costs on Make's pricing page first. Plans and limits change, so verify current details with Make.

Keep people in the loop

• Review the sheet regularly. Sort or filter by Follow-up date to see which enquiries are due.
• Change Status yourself as you work (for example, "Replied" or "Closed").
• Check Make's scenario history now and then. If a connection stops working, enquiries will still reach the sheet, but the tracking columns will stay empty.
• Avoid collecting personal details you do not need.

Want to build this yourself? Start with Make's free plan (affiliate link).

What to add next

Once this is running reliably, you could add an automatic acknowledgement email. Connecting a personal Gmail account to Make requires extra setup in Google Cloud, so we will cover that separately.

This post contains an affiliate link to Make. We built and tested the workflow described here ourselves.