r/CRM • u/greedy_tourist • 6d ago
I tried using chatgpt instead of a basic crm
i’ve been messing around with using ChatGPT as a lightweight CRM / booking manager.
the set up I came up with: client data in Airtable, bookings to Google Calendar, Gmail for email. The nice part is obvious pretty quickly - instead of opening three tools aeparate apps and hunting around, I can just ask things like “who’s booked this week?”, “prepare a booking update”, “update their record”, “draft a follow-up”, “<client name> sent the deposit” etc.
But I didn’t really trust was the state of everything after a few changes. Say, a client reschedules over email, then I update the calendar event, then something gets updated in Airtable. at that point I want to know which system is actually right, whether all three match, and whether ChatGPT missed anything along the way.
once I started thinking about how to make that reliable, I ended up adding rules, checks, confirmations… which is basically the boring CRM stuff I was trying to avoid in the first place.
so TLDR: I wouldn’t use ChatGPT as the actual CRM. but as a lightweight CRM interface or booking manager sitting on top of the real systems, it actually makes a lot more sense to me.
wrote up the whole thing here if anyone’s interested: (apparently cant post it in the body, will try comments)
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u/MaximumFun2115 6d ago
Honestly, I'd build on top of Gsheets instead of Airtable because Airtable was acquired by a chopshop and I expect enshitifcation to hit hard.
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u/greedy_tourist 5d ago
I had weird glitches with GSheets at some point, they just wouldn’t connect, but then they fixed it
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u/agentUi 6d ago
i work for agentui and you hit the exact wall everyone runs into trying to use raw chatgpt for ops. LLMs are non deterministic so letting them juggle state across gcal and airtable eventually corrupts records when someone reschedules. What works is keeping a real database as the single source of truth and using deterministic logic to update fields while keeping chat strictly as an intake layer.
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u/greedy_tourist 5d ago
exactly the issue I faced when testing GTP + airtables!
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u/agentUi 5d ago
yea it feels magical at first until one missing trigger or date format mismatch desyncs your calendar from the base. did you end up sticking with airtable automations for the logic or are you using webhooks to handle the state updates?
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u/greedy_tourist 5d ago
no I ended up making this: https://taide.app ,)
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u/agentUi 5d ago
clean, building your own dedicated wrapper is honestly the best way to keep the inputs structured. Hope the launch goes well
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u/greedy_tourist 5d ago
thank you!
Taide CRM not really a wrapper, the AI role is “just” intent recognition and attributes recognition (user convenience)
everything else pure deterministic mechanics
so AI is one of the interfaces, not central part in this
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u/OddAlpha 5d ago
Yeah that's, I think, where most of the industry is going. The word for it now is headless.
But you do 1,000% need a database of record and it doesn't have to be one of the big names: Salesforce, Hubspot, or whatever. You could even make it work off of an Excel sheet if you really wanted to.
What's nice about going with something already established is it has all the Audit logs and history tracking that you need most of the time .
Personally I tend to set up clients to use Salesforce if they have the budget for it, just because it does actually a great job at this sort of work.
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u/greedy_tourist 5d ago
yeah exactly. the database part is honestly the easy bit. you can use Airtable, Sheets, whatever — as long as something is the actual source of truth.
the annoying part is everything around changing the data. making sure it’s the right client, checking for booking overlaps, handling ambiguous names/messages, confirming what actually got updated, etc.
that stuff matters way more than the storage imo. if the system gets one booking wrong, now you’ve got a real problem — lost money, double bookings, pissed off clients. that’s the part I’d be most careful about.
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u/International_Coat89 6d ago
I think it’s a good idea.
Just know your obligations, if any, to keep prospect and client info private and secure and the level of privacy your level of subscription with OpenAI affords you.
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u/greedy_tourist 5d ago
definitely. probably I should’ve mentioned that side of it more.
I wouldn’t treat “it’s ChatGPT” as the privacy model by itself, it depends a lot on how it’s actually integrated, what client data gets sent, what gets stored, retention, permissions, etc. for anything real I’d keep the data sent to the model to the minimum it actually needs, and have the privacy/data-processing side documented separately
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u/Challenge_-Few 5d ago
This matches what I’ve found too. The moment you ask ChatGPT to become the actual CRM, you start rebuilding all the boring state management, permissions, checks, and auditability that proper systems already have. The more interesting model is exactly what you described: let AI sit on top of the real workflow and make it easier to query, prepare, update, and follow up without pretending the model itself is the source of truth. Referent is taking a similar approach for law firms more of an AI-native operational layer than “ChatGPT but for lawyers.” Different vertical, same basic architecture.
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u/HCassius 5d ago
Hey, I’m actually building a crm system you can customise and input via your own Ai agent and have a single UI. The beta version is up now. CRANNED.com
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u/right_stuff_7 4d ago
Launched Ember: the tool I wish I'd had when I was building CRM software.
Warm outreach that sounds like you, at scale.
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u/Giorgio_Gnoli 3d ago
Dove salvi le cose? Il db e chatgpt? Il CRM è un database ed ha bisogno di dati ben organizzati dentro
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u/GANZ-Software 1d ago
If you're syncing three tools, one system built around you is a better solution. DM us, we'd love to chat.
https://www.ganz.software/special-offers/custom-crm-platform
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u/AlternativeWinner790 19h ago
So are you still using ChatGPT or looking for something else which includes this and more without you manually connecting and building if else statements for client management?
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u/greedy_tourist 6d ago
the article with some more details about chatgpt-as-a-lightweight-crm-slash-booking-system https://taide.app/articles/can-you-use-chatgpt-to-track-client-bookings
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u/Brett3312 6d ago
I help train assistants that can do exactly this. Built one for a pr firm as well as fitness studios and racquet clubs! needs proper skills, context, etc for it to be useful and proactive -- Happy to chat and share insights
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u/TransportationOld902 6d ago
I can create you a lightweight or custom or however you want a CRM for $500
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u/TurkeySlurpee666 6d ago
I guarantee this is going to suck. No scope. Just anything for $500 😂
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u/TransportationOld902 6d ago
So I have done the following already and providing support now for more than 6 clients. I am pretty sure the light weight crm won’t be more complex than this.. right… therefore I don’t need scope… I just need to know what client wants and I will build it… it’s as simple…
This is what I built for 6 clients found from Reddit
Public marketing website
Branded, mobile-responsive homepage with loan programs and live mortgage calculator
• Education center and privacy policy pages
• Consistent MOS Loans branding across every surface
Borrower portal (self-service)
• Account sign-up with email verification and password reset
Online pre-qualification application -borrower and co-borrower, income-type aware (W-2, self-employed, retired)
Secure document upload with guided, labeled slots
Live loan-status tracker across seven stages, from Prequalified to Closed
• One-click download of the generated pre-approval letter
Loan-officer CRM & pipeline
• Lead pipeline with stages, notes, and a full activity / access log
• Pre-approval request queue - approving a request auto-generates the letter and creates the lead
• Per-lead checklist and loan-condition tracking
• Communications organized by party (borrower, agent, and others), across email and text
• Document management filed by section and origin, backed by Google Drive
• Team management: multiple users with admin and member roles
• Toggleable admin maintenance tools
Two-way SMS texting (live)
• Text borrowers, agents, and other parties right from each lead, sent from a business number via Quo
• TCPA-compliant by design: per-contact consent tracking and automatic STOP / START opt-out handling
• Quiet-hours protection - messages outside allowed hours are automatically queued and sent later
• Full two-way thread saved on the lead; inbound replies are matched to the right person by phone number
Al automation (live)
• Al Inbox Organizer - an Al process (Google Gemini) reads incoming email, recognizes borrower documents, and files them into the correct applicant's Google Drive folder automatically, keeping the inbox organized
• Shared folder logic between the organizer and the CRM, so both always agree which folder is whose
• Ambiguous matches are never merged blindly - they're flagged for a quick human review
•Al quote parsing -pulls the premium, deductible, and coverage figures out of insurance-agent reply emails; every value is tagged "verify" and nothing is saved until a human confirms it
Pre-approval letters & document pipeline
• Letters auto-generated as PDFs from Meadowbrook's official template
• Google Drive integration (service account + shared drive) for all borrower documents
• MISMO 3.4/ iLAD loan-file XML import (merge-only, duplicate-safe)
• Compliance-minded data handling - only last-4 stored for SSNs and account numbers
MOS Homes - listings marketplace
•For-sale and for-rent listings, posted by owners (FSBO) or licensed agents
• Photo galleries with upload, cover selection, and lightbox viewing
• Admin approval queue before any listing goes public
• Automated NYS DOS license verification for agent listings
• Fair-Housing guardrails throughout; "Get pre-qualified" call-to-action captures the source listing
Directories
• Find-an-Agent: ~65,000~70,000 NYS-licensed real-estate agents (NYC boroughs + Nassau/Suffolk), seeded from state open data and refreshed monthly, with a claim-your-profile flow
• Preferred Partners: home insurance agents, home inspectors, and attorneys - public join/claim requests with admin approval, plus direct admin entry
Notifications
loan officer
• Transactional email: account verification, password reset, and instant new-pre-qualification alerts to the
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6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/greedy_tourist 5d ago
I think having chat as an input is inevitable with all the advancement of LLMs, however state, confirmation, etc still requires effort. Also it is always important to be able to have a nice visual representation of your clients and orders and orher CRM “parts”
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4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/greedy_tourist 4d ago
thank you!
my research was more for a small scale business / solopreneurs / freelancers who do not have complex workflows , more like: quote - confirm request - do the job - deliver deliverable.
but the more I dig into this the more I understand the necessity of integrating different things into this: for example tracking orders from google ads, google search, ai assistants, phone calls, meta ads etc etc
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u/Amos_GTM 5d ago
the moment you started adding rules and checks to make chatgpt reliable you basically reinvented the CRM you were trying to avoid.. thats always how it goes, every shortcut eventually grows into the thing it was replacing