The situation
Years of client history, without the capacity to act on it
A boutique advisory that helps global companies with cross-border indirect tax, including VAT and consumption tax, is the kind of firm where the founder is also the operator. Strategy, client relationships, and, until recently, most of the follow-up all ran through one person. Its clients range from large enterprises to Amazon and Shopify sellers navigating the compliance maze of selling across borders.
The firm already had years of useful client context across email, CRM notes, and founder memory, but the team lacked a repeatable way to decide who to re-engage and what to say.
Years of that work had piled up in one place: the inbox. Thousands of threads, hundreds of relationships, and a quiet certainty that somewhere in there sat clients worth reconnecting with. But a lean firm does not have a revenue-operations team, and no one has time to read years of email. The value was real; the capacity to act on it was not.
The founder partnered with the Kuse team to connect Outlook, HubSpot, Notion, and Slack, then design a reviewed re-engagement workflow around the firm's relationship history. The engagement combined Kuse's delivery expertise with the founder's judgment, keeping every client-facing decision under human control.
Impact TL;DR
- Surfaced 60 high-potential dormant clients from years of email history, ranked by relationship value, not just recency.
- Personalized re-engagement drafts grounded in each relationship and approved by the founder before a single send.
- Four replies and, within two weeks, one reopened relationship that closed at about $200K.
- Back-office throughput up about 3x at the same headcount through CRM updates and an automation pipeline.
- A repeatable draft → review → send safety model for a high-trust, relationship-driven business.
“Within two weeks of starting the engagement, we reopened a relationship that became a $200K deal.
Founder, Tax Advisory
01
Use case
Reviving years of client history
The problem: The firm's best future clients were often its past clients. But finding them meant manually re-reading years of correspondence, impossible for a small team. Blasting the whole list was worse: generic mass email is exactly how a professional-services firm damages the relationships it is trying to rekindle.
How the collaboration worked: The Kuse team connected the firm's inbox history and designed a relationship-review workflow that reconstructs the context of each dormant client, ranks the strongest opportunities, and prepares a re-engagement draft grounded in the actual relationship rather than a template.
“The engagement surfaced valuable relationships we had assumed were gone.
Founder, Tax Advisory
02
Use case
Outreach that goes out only when the founder says so
The problem: In a relationship business, tone and timing in client email carry real weight, and a misjudged message to a valued client is a cost you cannot undo. Early on, an outreach email went out without enough review, a moment that made one thing clear: for this kind of firm, fully autonomous send is the wrong default.
How the collaboration worked: The Kuse team designed an approval-first outreach process. Every client-facing email arrives as a draft with its reasoning and suggested tone attached. The founder reviews, edits, and approves before anything is sent, while higher-stakes or ambiguous cases move into a dedicated approval queue.
“I get the speed of AI, but every word still goes out on my say-so. That's the only way I'd let it near my clients.
Founder, Tax Advisory
03
Use case
Turning replies into pipeline, and keeping the back office moving
The problem: Re-engagement only matters if the reply turns into a tracked opportunity, and a founder juggling delivery, deadlines, and sales is exactly who drops that ball. Meanwhile the routine machinery, building deal folders, updating the CRM, and tracking filing deadlines across jurisdictions, quietly eats the day.
How the collaboration worked: The Kuse team connected replies, HubSpot updates, deal folders, and Slack approvals into one operating flow. When a client responds, the workflow prepares the HubSpot update and next follow-up for review, while recurring back-office steps run through a production automation pipeline. The firm reached roughly three times the throughput without adding headcount.
“It's like adding a back office overnight. Nothing falls through the cracks anymore.
Founder, Tax Advisory
What changed after the engagement
A lean advisory now operates like a much larger firm
- The inbox became a pipeline.Years of history is now a source of revenue, not an archive.
- Follow-up is systematic, not remembered.Dormant clients surface and get re-engaged on a cadence.
- Client communication is safe by default.Draft → review → send keeps the founder in control of every word.
- The back office runs itself.CRM updates, deal folders, and filing deadlines move without manual effort.
- One small firm, several jobs.The delivered workflows cover sales ops, CRM ops, and recurring administration with scoped access and founder review.
About the customer
A boutique cross-border indirect-tax advisory
A boutique cross-border indirect-tax advisory serving global companies, from large enterprises to Amazon and Shopify sellers, supported by a network of tax-agent partners. The customer has been anonymized at their request.
Outlook and Gmail historyHubSpot CRM read + writeSlack updatesdraft → review → sendpersistent memoryautomation-pipeline handoff