AI agent development for UK businesses

Build your AI workforce

Agents that do the work your team is drowning in. They read the situation, decide what is needed and act inside the systems you already run, with a person signing off anything that matters.

★★★★★5.0 across 52 Google reviews
Your first agent, live in month oneOn both plans, and it takes over a real job somebody on your team does today. Not a demo, not a pilot.
Inside the tools you already runYour CRM, your accounts package, your inbox. We do not make you change software, we make what you have smarter.
A human always signs it offEvery agent has approval gates and an audit trail. Nothing that matters leaves the building without a person seeing it.
Agents at work

Three builds,
with agents inside them.

The quoting, the reporting and the enquiry handling below all run on agents doing the reading, drafting and deciding, with a person signing off.

The Remove Spray Foam quoting system built by designbox
Remove Spray Foam
Spray foam removal

Survey in the morning,
quote out the same day

A quoting agent reads the survey, prices the job from their own rates and drafts the quote. The estimator checks it and sends. What took an evening at the desk now happens while the job is still fresh.

faster from survey to quote
4.5×more sales
Zeroenquiries lost between survey and quote
The Rolling Bean booking and quoting system built by designbox
The Rolling Bean
Mobile coffee bar hire

The whole operation,
in one system

An enquiry agent reads each event request, checks availability and drafts the quote, so nothing waits in an inbox. Still being built out, already handling the first response every time.

10×faster to get a quote out
Zeroenquiries falling through the cracks
Onesystem instead of a phone, a diary and a spreadsheet
The designbox sales and reporting system
Agencio
Our own sales and reporting

We ran it on ourselves first

A reporting agent pulls our sales and reporting together every week, drafts the summary and flags what moved. What took seven hours takes 45 minutes, and the time went into selling.

45 minsto do what used to take seven hours
2.5×sales and sales capacity, within three months
6 hrsback with the sales team, every week




What we build for you

One request, and your whole team of AI agents gets to work

This is what we set up for businesses: a team of AI agents that hand work to each other, inside your systems, using your data. Pick a job below and watch one run, from the request to the finished document sitting in front of you for approval.

1 of 6 watched

Your business · AI workspace5 agents online
YOU

Your request

✓ Sent

Waiting for your requestWaiting to start
Ready for your approvalWaiting on you

Everything is done, this is the bit that needs a person

Elapsed0 min
Done by hand7 hours
With your agents31 min

Illustrative examples based on typical business processes. Timings are conservative estimates of what these jobs take, not results from a specific client, and the real builds are just below.

Clearing something up first

A chatbot answers. An automation repeats. An agent decides.

Most people meet AI as a chat window, so that is what they picture. Here is the same enquiry landing in your inbox, handled three different ways, so the difference is obvious.

It answers

A chatbot

Holds a conversation using a script or a knowledge base. Genuinely useful on a website, and we build them, but the conversation is where it stops.

The enquiryTells the customer your opening hours and offers to take their details.

Nothing has actually been done yet.

It repeats

An automation

Follows the exact steps you drew, in the same order, every time. Fast, reliable and cheap to run, until something turns up that the path did not allow for.

The enquiryCopies it into your CRM, tags it and sends a templated acknowledgement.

It cannot handle the exception, and business is mostly exceptions.

It decides and does

An agent

Reads the situation, works out what is needed, then uses your data and your systems to finish the job. When it should not decide alone, it escalates to a person with everything already prepared.

The enquiryWorks out what they are asking for, checks stock and current pricing, drafts the quote in your tone, and flags the one unusual line for you to approve.

The customer gets an answer in minutes, not on Monday.

A chatbot talks to your customers. An agent does the job your customer is waiting on.

Where they earn their keep

AI agents for every part of your business

Most businesses start with one department, prove it, then roll out. Pick a department to see the agents we build most often, what they plug into, and what changes.

Who this works for

If your business has one of these problems, agents pay for themselves

Industry matters less than bottleneck. Find the one that sounds like your week.

01

You quote or estimate a lot

Every quote takes a skilled person hours, and the slow ones lose the job to whoever answered first. This is where agents pay for themselves fastest, and it is where most of our clients start.

Builders · installers · fabricators · agencies · manufacturers
02

You process orders by hand

Orders arrive as emails, PDFs and calls, and somebody rekeys every one.

Distributors · wholesalers · ecommerce
03

Your inbox runs the business

Everything lands in one place, and things get missed on busy days.

Service · property · professional services
04

You book appointments all day

Someone spends their life arranging, confirming and rearranging.

Clinics · salons · garages · trades
05

Your data lives in six places

Accounts here, CRM there, spreadsheets everywhere, and nobody trusts the numbers.

Any business past about ten people
06

You hire and onboard often

Screening, scheduling and induction eat weeks that nobody has.

Logistics · hospitality · care · construction

Your agents work inside the software
you already run

No new platform, nothing ripped out. If it has an API we can usually reach it.

CRM & salesHubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho, HighLevel, Monday
Accounts & financeXero, QuickBooks, Sage, Stripe, GoCardless
Web & ecommerceWordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, Webflow, Magento
Email, chat & calendarsOutlook, Google Workspace, Slack, Teams, WhatsApp
Files, data & projectsSharePoint, Google Drive, Dropbox, Notion, Airtable, ClickUp
ReportingGA4, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Looker, Power BI

Logo wall: Kon to swap these tiles for real brand SVGs, greyscale on dark, uniform height. Behind them we use the leading models and orchestration platforms, and we pick per job rather than tying you to one vendor. If a better model arrives next year, your agents move to it.

How we work

From first conversation to agents doing real work

No months of discovery and no strategy deck that sits in a drawer. Every stage ends with something you can hold, and the first agent is working inside month one.

1

The blueprint

The designbox team working together in the Westcliff-on-Sea studio

Two to three days of senior time inside your business. We sit with the people doing the work, record their screens, and map how a job really travels from enquiry to cash.

A process map of how the business actually runs, not how the handbook says it does
An opportunity register, every one scored on return against effort
A solution architecture and a phased, costed roadmap
Yours to keep whatever you decide next. £2,000, credited against a six-month retainer
Within a fortnight
2

Your first agent goes live

A designbox team member reviewing a build

We do not build for six months and hope. We take the single best opportunity from the blueprint and put it into production, in your systems, on your data, with your approval gates.

One working agent doing a real job somebody does today
Built inside the software you already run
Approval limits agreed with you before it touches anything
Documentation and a training session so your team can use it
Inside month one, on both plans
3

Build out the workforce

designbox designers and developers at work

With one agent proving itself, we work down the roadmap. More agents, deeper integrations, dashboards so you can see what they are doing, and the custom CRM or web app underneath where it is needed.

Agents across a whole department rather than a single task
Integrations into your CRM, accounts, website and comms
Dashboards showing what ran, what it saved and what needed a human
A full audit trail of every decision an agent made
Typically 60 to 90 days
4

Run, improve and hand over

The designbox team working together in the studio

Agents drift. Models change underneath them, integrations move, and your business does not stand still. We monitor, tune and extend them, train your team, and document everything.

Monitoring and tuning as models and integrations change
A monthly impact report in plain English
One team training session every month
Full ownership of everything built, with no lock-in
Ongoing, and cancellable

94%

less time on the jobs below

Across the six jobs from the simulator, the average is a 94% cut in hands-on time. A person still signs off every one.

Writing a proposal

4 hours22 min

You read it, change a line, send it

Processing an order

40 min6 min

You approve the one line that needs a decision

Chasing overdue invoices

3 hours12 min

You make the two calls that need a voice

Onboarding a customer

2 hours15 min

You set the credit limit and say hello

Screening 47 applications

4 hours20 min

You interview the four on the shortlist

Building the monthly report

2 days20 min

You read two pages and change what you disagree with

Estimates for typical processes, not results from a specific client. The measured before-and-afters are up in the case studies. What matters is not the exact number, it is that the person who used to spend their week on this now spends it on work that needs a person.

Working together

Two ways to build your AI workforce

Both are ongoing, both put your first agent live in month one, and both are run through a Design Box account manager who knows your business. Prices exclude VAT.

Part-time AI team
£2,500a month

For proving it properly in one part of the business before rolling out.

Your first agent live inside month one
Fortnightly strategy calls with your AI strategist
Custom agents, automations and integrations built to your roadmap
Integration with the systems you already run
Ongoing monitoring, tuning and optimisation
Monthly impact report in plain English
One team training session every month
Dedicated Design Box account manager
Talk about part-time
Most businesses start here
Full-time AI team
£4,950a month

For rolling AI across the business, with several builds running at once.

Everything in part-time, plus:
Weekly strategy calls instead of fortnightly
Several builds running in parallel rather than one at a time
Priority build queue
Deeper integrations and a custom CRM or web app underneath where it is needed
Dashboards so you can see what your agents are doing
Quarterly review of the roadmap against actual results
Talk about full-time

Three-month minimum, then rolling and cancellable with 30 days. Model and token costs sit on your own account, quoted up front, and are usually a small fraction of the savings.

Compare this with hiring in-houseOne AI engineer costs about £99,070 in year one. See the full breakdown

This is the comparison worth doing, because it is the real alternative. Figures below are for one mid-level AI engineer, using current UK salary ranges and 2026/27 employer rates.

Hiring one AI engineer
Salary mid-level, UK range £65k–£85k£72,000
Employer national insurance 15% above £5,000£10,050
Pension auto-enrolment minimum£1,320
Recruitment fee at 10%£7,200
Laptop, software licences and model access£4,800
Payroll, HR and employment legal support£1,200
Benefits, perks and a training budget£2,500
Hours you actually get 37.5/week, less holiday and sickness~1,684
Year one£99,070
  • Three to six months to hire, assuming you find the right one
  • That buys roughly 225 working days once holiday and average sickness come out, so about £440 for every day they are at their desk
  • Those hours land in office time only, so out-of-hours work waits until someone is back at their desk
  • One person, one skill set, and nobody covering when they are off
  • No quality control except their own
  • And they can hand in their notice
A full-time AI team with us
£4,950 a month£59,400
Employer national insuranceincluded
Pensionincluded
Recruitment feenone
Laptop, software licences and model accessincluded
Payroll, HR and employment legal supportnone
Benefits, perks and a training budgetincluded
Hours it can run once live, around the clock~8,700
Year one£59,400
  • Starts in weeks, not months
  • An AI strategist, an account manager, a project manager and build capacity
  • Runs overnight, weekends and bank holidays once it is live, so roughly five times the coverage for the same year
  • No holiday gaps, no sick days and no notice periods
  • Quality control built into every single build
  • A company standing behind the work, not one employee
Hiring one AI engineer

£99,070

A full-time AI team with us

£59,400

£39,670 less in year oneand you get a team rather than a person

Salary range from current UK market data. Employer national insurance and pension at 2026/27 rates, shown before any Employment Allowance, which most businesses with existing staff have already used elsewhere. Recruitment at a conservative 10%. Hours are indicative: a full-time role of 37.5 a week, less statutory holiday and average sickness, against a system available around the clock once built. Every figure is an estimate to make the comparison honest, not a quote.

Where everyone starts
We record how the work is really done, not how the handbook says
We map enquiry to cash, then whatever else is on fire
Every opportunity scored on return against effort
A costed estimate for the lot, with no obligation

The AI blueprint

Nobody should buy AI before somebody has properly understood how their business works. So that is what we do first.

£2,000two to three days of senior time
Credited in fullagainst a six-month retainer within 60 days
Book a blueprint call

You can skip it if your processes are documented and your data is clean. In almost every business we look at, they are not. Not ready for a paid blueprint? Start with our free AI strategy overview.

AI BlueprintPrepared for your business · typically 40 pages
01How your business actually runs today8 pp
02Process map, enquiry to cash6 pp
03Where the time and the money leak5 pp
04Opportunity register, scored and ranked7 pp
05Solution architecture and agent design6 pp
06Data, security and approval gates4 pp
07Phased roadmap and costed estimate6 pp
✓ Yours to keep, whatever you decide to do next

Even if you never build an agent with us, you finish with your business properly documented for the first time.

The people behind it

Why Design Box

Plenty of people are selling AI who have never run a business. We have, from Essex, for over a decade.

10+
years running the agency
90%
of clients stay year on year
51
five-star Google reviews

You get people, not a portal

One account manager who knows your business and who you can actually ring. You never explain yourself twice.

We build what the agents run inside

Websites, stores, CRMs and reporting are our day job. Most AI firms can only work on top of whatever you already have.

Ten years of being accountable

Cyber Essentials Plus certified, a decade of building and running business-critical systems, and clients we started with years ago. AI is new. Answering for the outcome is not.

We will tell you when it is no

Some processes should not be automated and some businesses are not ready. The blueprint exists so we can say so early.

The designbox team in a planning session
A designbox team member working on a client website
The designbox team in the studio
The bit everyone worries about

Your data, your rules, your systems

Two questions come up in every single conversation: what happens to our data, and what happens if we leave. Here are both answers up front.

You own everything we build

The agents, the workflows and the software are yours, not licensed back to you
The prompts, the logic and the documentation come with them
Everything runs on your accounts, so your data stays in your systems
If you leave, you keep the lot and we hand it over properly, documented

No lock-in and no hostage-taking. If we are worth keeping, it will be because the work is good.

Security and control

Cyber Essentials Plus certified, and a decade of handling client systems
Every agent has approval gates you set, and limits it cannot cross alone
A full audit trail of what every agent read, decided and did
Access is scoped, so an agent only ever sees what its job needs

Model and processing arrangements are covered in writing before anything touches your live data, and we go through them in the blueprint.

Good questions

AI agents, answered honestly

Can’t see yours? Ask us anything on a quick call, no obligation.

What is an AI agent, in plain English?
Software that does a job rather than answering a question. It watches for something happening, gathers what it needs from your systems, works out what should happen next, does it, and brings anything above its limits to a person. Think of it as a very fast, very literal member of staff who never forgets a step.
Is this just a chatbot with a different name?
No. A chatbot holds a conversation. An agent finishes work. Most of the agents we build never speak to a customer at all: they read orders, build quotes, chase invoices, prepare reports and update systems. We do build chatbots when a business needs one, but that is a different product.
How is an agent different from an automation like Zapier?
An automation follows the path you drew, in the same order, every time. It is excellent until something turns up that the path did not allow for. An agent works out the path, which means it copes with the exceptions that make up most of real business. We use both, and part of the blueprint is deciding which each job needs, because a simple automation is often the better answer.
Will it work with the software we already use?
Almost certainly. We work with the main CRMs, accounts packages, ecommerce platforms, inboxes and reporting tools, and if a system has an API we can usually reach it. We do not ask you to move platform. The whole point is making what you already run smarter.
What actually happens to our data?
Everything runs on your own accounts, so your data stays in your systems. Access is scoped to what each agent needs, every action is logged, and the processing and model arrangements are set out in writing before anything touches live data. We go through all of it during the blueprint rather than after you have signed.
Are we replacing people with this?
Not in our experience. What gets replaced is the copying and pasting, the rekeying and the chasing, which is usually the part of the job people like least. The businesses we do this for tend to grow without hiring for admin, and put the people they have onto work that needs judgement.
How quickly will we see something actually working?
Your first agent is live inside month one on both plans, doing a real job somebody does today. The blueprint comes back within a fortnight of starting, and production systems across a department usually take 60 to 90 days.
Do we need technical people on our side?
No. You need people who know how the business works, which is who we sit with during the blueprint. We handle the building, the integrating, the testing and the training, and everything is documented so your team can use it without understanding how it was made.
What does it cost?
Ongoing work is £2,500 a month part-time or £4,950 full-time, excluding VAT, with a three-month minimum. The blueprint is £2,000 and is credited in full against a six-month retainer if you go ahead within 60 days. Model and token costs sit on your own account and are quoted up front.
Do we own what you build?
Yes, entirely. The agents, the workflows, the software, the prompts and the documentation are yours. If you stop working with us you keep all of it and we hand it over properly rather than switching it off.
What happens when an agent gets something wrong?
It should not get far, because anything above the limits you set stops and waits for a person, and every action is logged so we can see exactly what happened. When something does slip through, we fix the cause rather than the symptom, and that is a large part of what the ongoing work pays for.
What if we want to stop?
The retainer has a three-month minimum and is then rolling, cancellable with 30 days notice. You keep everything built, fully documented, and we hand it over properly rather than switching it off.
Next step

Let’s find where AI actually pays off in your business

Thirty minutes, no hard sell, and an honest answer either way.

Rather check us out first? Ask an AI what it makes of us