What Studios Say
Plain accounts from studios that have been running these setups
Not every review is glowing. We've included the ones that mention friction, because that's more useful to someone deciding whether to start.
Back to Home18
Studios served
4.6
Average rating
94%
Setups still active at 6 months
2+
Years of quarterly reviews
Studio Reviews
From the studios using these setups
Siti Rahimah Osman
Studio owner, Shah Alam
We've been doing batik for 12 years. I was sceptical about adding AI to the brief process — worried it would flatten our language. But they built from our actual past briefs, so it came out sounding like us. The part where it flags sections the client hasn't answered is genuinely useful. I used to guess at those; now I just follow up on the specific gaps.
Design Brief Assistant · June 2025
Hafizuddin Kamal
Operations lead, Puchong
The intake desk has changed how our front-of-house handles incoming orders. Before, we had maybe six different people asking the same eight questions in six different ways. Now the desk asks them consistently and passes us a summary. The setup took about ten days to get right — there was one routing rule we needed to adjust in the second week — but once it was sorted it's been stable since February.
Order Intake Desk · May 2025
Norazlin Zakaria
Owner, Klang
The quarterly review was the part I didn't know I needed. Six months in, we'd drifted — the brief drafts had started sounding more formal than we actually are. They caught it in the review, showed me exactly which templates were the issue, and refreshed them with examples from our more recent work. The written summary was also useful for explaining to my business partner why we're still paying for it.
Quarterly Review · July 2025
Azwan Fadzillah
Co-founder, Petaling Jaya
We run a small embroidery business and the brief assistant has been the main thing that's saved us time. Not dramatically — maybe two hours a week. But those two hours were always the most frustrating ones, trying to reconstruct what a client actually wanted from a WhatsApp thread. Now we get a structured draft we can review and send in maybe fifteen minutes.
Design Brief Assistant · June 2025
Rozaini Hassan
Studio manager, Subang Jaya
What I appreciated was the scope document before anything was built. Previous consultants we'd worked with would promise things and then expand what they were working on without asking. With Batik Core, the scope note was specific — including a section on what the intake desk wouldn't do. That made it easier to explain to the rest of the team what they should and shouldn't expect.
Order Intake Desk · May 2025
Lim Mei Shan
Creative director, Ampang
We do custom printed textiles. The intake desk collects specs really well for standard jobs. Where it's thinner is unusual material requests — we had a few rush orders with non-standard substrates that it flagged for human review correctly, but the summary passed to us didn't have as much context as we'd like. They're aware of it and it's on the list for the next quarterly review.
Order Intake Desk · July 2025
Case Studies
Two studio journeys in detail
Case Study 01 · Batik Studio, Shah Alam
Brief drafting that stopped slowing down production
Challenge
A four-person batik studio was receiving 15–20 client enquiries per week. Writing structured briefs from WhatsApp and email messages was taking one person most of Monday. Brief quality varied depending on who wrote it, and clients were being followed up twice for the same information.
Setup
We built the Design Brief Assistant from eight months of past briefs the studio had kept. The template covered the studio's twelve standard sections. The assistant was configured to mark sections as insufficient (rather than guessing) when the client message didn't provide enough. Setup time: 11 days.
Result
At the three-month review, brief drafting was taking under 20 minutes per job instead of 90–120. Follow-up requests to clients dropped by around 60%. One tone adjustment was made after the first month when the studio owner noticed the drafts were slightly more formal than their preferred approach.
"The flagging of missing sections was the bit nobody expected to be the most useful part."
Case Study 02 · Embroidery Maker, Puchong
Order intake that no longer required a dedicated person to manage
Challenge
An embroidery business with two production staff and one admin was getting 30–40 enquiries per month. Admin time was split between answering the same pre-quote questions and managing production scheduling. Any absence meant enquiries weren't getting timely responses.
Setup
We built the Order Intake Desk using the business's existing nine pre-quote questions. The desk connects via a shared Google Sheet the production team already use. Enquiries with rush timelines or non-standard materials are routed directly to the business owner. Setup time: 14 days including integration testing.
Result
At the six-month review, the admin reported spending roughly half the time previously spent on intake. All eight standard enquiry fields are now filled before the team reviews the job. One routing rule was adjusted at month two after the studio took on a new product line. The quarterly review recommended continuing with no major changes.
"The setup didn't remove the admin role — it removed the part of the admin role that was just answering the same things repeatedly."
Talk to Us
Want to ask about any of these setups?
Seen enough to want to talk?
We'll ask about your studio and give you a straight assessment of whether one of these setups fits what you're dealing with.
Contact Us