How to Choose an AI Automation Agency in the UK: 12 Questions to Ask
The UK has sprouted hundreds of AI automation agencies in three years. Some are excellent engineering shops; some are a rebranded marketing agency with a subscription to the same tools you could buy. The website rarely tells you which - but the answers to twelve questions reliably do. Take this list into any sales call, including ours.
Questions About the Work
One: who actually builds and runs the workflows - named engineers, or a white-labelled platform? Two: what happens when a workflow breaks at 7am - who notices, and how fast? Three: which actions can ever run without human approval, and is that specified per workflow in writing? Four: can we see a real workflow running on real systems, not a slide? Five: what does week two look like - who owns changes, and what do they cost?
Questions About the Money
Six: will you put the expected return - hours, not adjectives - in writing before we pay anything? Seven: what exactly does the monthly fee cover, and what triggers extra charges? Eight: what does the contract term look like, and what does leaving cost? The pattern to watch for: confident agencies write numbers down and make leaving easy, because their renewal case is the work itself. Twelve-month lock-ins and vague deliverables are each other's natural companions.
Questions About the Risk
Nine: where does our data live, and is it used to train anyone's models - in writing? Ten: what happens to our workflows and data if you shut down or we leave - is the exit path in the contract? Eleven: is there a guarantee, and what precisely triggers it? Twelve: what is proprietary here - and if the honest answer is the integration and the operating discipline rather than a secret model, does the agency say so plainly? An agency that claims a proprietary AI it cannot describe is marketing; one that names its stack and its value honestly is engineering.
Answers that should end the meeting:
- “It never really breaks” - everything breaks; the question was who notices
- A guarantee with no measurable trigger, or none at all
- No written estimate before payment - only case studies from other industries
- Vagueness about model training on your data
- A exit story that amounts to “why would you ever leave?”
The single most revealing request: ask the agency to name the last workflow they killed because it was not returning the hours. Operators have an answer; resellers have a pause.
The market being young cuts both ways: there are genuine bargains among the good small operators, and expensive disappointments wearing enterprise branding. The twelve questions cost you one meeting to ask - considerably cheaper than finding out at month six.
Ready to deploy your AI agent?
Our engineers connect your systems and build workflows like these for you - live in five working days, supported from then on.