Custom AI Agent Development
Agents that take action inside your business, built by someone who answers for the results.
What an AI Agent Is (and What It Isn't)
A chatbot answers questions. An agent does things. It reads an inbound lead, checks it against your criteria, researches the company, writes the follow-up, logs it in your CRM, and flags the ones your sales team should call today. It works across the tools you already pay for, follows the rules you set, and hands off to a person when a decision needs judgment.
That distinction matters because most agent projects fail in the gap between a demo and production. A demo works on five clean test cases. A production agent has to handle the five hundredth strange email, the half-filled form, and the API that times out on a Friday night. We build for the second scenario.
The market for agent builds splits three ways right now. Freelance marketplaces sell agents for a few hundred dollars that rarely survive contact with real data. Large development shops quote $25,000 to $200,000 and up, with months of discovery before anything ships. In between, very few providers pair the technical build with a working understanding of marketing, sales, and the business outcome the agent is supposed to move.
Lionwish sits in that middle. Twenty years in digital marketing means we start with the outcome: more qualified leads, faster response times, fewer hours lost to reporting and data entry. The agent is the tool. The outcome is the point.
AI Agents We Build
Lead Intake and Qualification Agents
Every form fill, call transcript, and inbound email gets read, scored, and routed within minutes, day or night. High-intent leads go straight to your team with a summary attached. Low-fit leads get a polite, personalized reply instead of silence. Speed-to-lead stops depending on who happens to be checking the inbox.
Prospecting and Outreach Agents
Agents that watch for new businesses, job postings, funding announcements, or other buying signals in your market, research each prospect, and draft personalized outreach for your review. Your team approves and sends. The research hours disappear. This is the same kind of agent we run for our own business development.
Customer Support and FAQ Agents
Trained on your policies, service pages, and past tickets, these agents answer routine questions, book appointments, check order or job status, and escalate anything sensitive to a person with full context. Your staff handles the conversations that need a human.
Marketing Reporting Agents
Agents that pull data from Google Ads, Meta, GA4, Search Console, and your CRM, compare it against targets, and write the plain-English summary: what moved, why, and what to do next. They can also watch for problems between reports, like a campaign overspending or conversion tracking going quiet, and alert you the same day.
SEO and Content Research Agents
Keyword research, competitor content tracking, SERP monitoring, and content briefs produced on a schedule, so your writers and strategists start from finished research instead of a blank page.
Internal Operations Agents
Document intake, invoice and form processing, scheduling, CRM cleanup, and the other repetitive back-office work that quietly eats a part-time salary every year.
How We Build
- Scoping call and workflow review. We map the process, identify where an agent saves time or makes money, and tell you plainly if it won’t. This step is free.
- Fixed-scope proposal. One price for the build, one for ongoing support. No open-ended hourly billing and no surprise invoices.
- Build and test against real data. We test on your leads, tickets, and edge cases, not tidy samples.
- Supervised launch. The agent starts with human approval on key actions. Autonomy increases as it proves itself.
- Monitoring and tuning. A monthly review of what the agent did, what it got wrong, what it cost per task, and what we changed.
We build on proven orchestration platforms like n8n, Make, and Zapier, with models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google chosen by fit and running cost. Agents connect to HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, GA4, Google Ads, Meta, and most CRMs and platforms with an API.
You own the build. Workflows live in your accounts, documentation is yours, and there is no proprietary platform you have to rent from us forever.
Custom agent pricing across the industry ranges from a few hundred dollars on freelance marketplaces to well over $100,000 at enterprise development firms. Most Lionwish builds land well below the dev shop range because we scope tightly and build on proven tools instead of writing everything from scratch.
Single-Task Agent: starting at $3,500
One workflow, two to three integrations, human approval built in. Typical timeline: two to three weeks.
Production Agent: $7,500 to $15,000
Multi-step workflows, CRM and ad platform integrations, error handling, logging, and a simple performance dashboard. Typical timeline: four to eight weeks.
Multi-Agent Systems: custom quote
Several agents working together across sales, marketing, and operations, scoped in phases so you see results before committing to the full build.
Ongoing Management: from $500 per month
Monitoring, tuning, model updates, and a monthly performance review. AI model and platform usage is billed at cost, and we estimate it per task before you sign.
Who This Is For
Service businesses — plumbers, electricians, HVAC, landscapers, contractors - where an agent answers after-hours calls and form fills, qualifies the job, and books the appointment before the customer calls the next company on the list.
Medical and healthcare practices — dentists, optometrists, physical therapists, chiropractors - where an agent handles appointment requests, intake questions, and reminders, with privacy requirements scoped before anything is built.
Legal and professional services — attorneys, accountants, financial advisors - where an agent screens inquiries, gathers case or client details, and routes qualified leads to the right person with a summary attached.
Restaurants and hospitality — where an agent answers reservation, hours, and event questions, drafts review responses, and follows up on private event and catering leads.
Retail — where an agent answers product, stock, and order questions, handles routine customer service, and keeps follow-up campaigns running without manual work.
Real estate — agents and brokers who need every new lead answered in minutes, where an AI agent asks the qualifying questions and schedules showings so no buyer or seller goes cold waiting on a callback.
Common Questions
Ai Agent FAQs
How is an AI agent different from the marketing automation you already offer?
Automation follows fixed rules: if this happens, do that. An agent reads context and chooses between options, like deciding whether a lead is worth a sales call or drafting a reply that fits the specific question asked. Many projects use both. Automation handles the predictable steps and the agent handles the judgment calls in between.
How long does a build take?
Single-task agents typically go live in two to three weeks. Production agents with multiple integrations take four to eight weeks. You will see a working version early so you can react to it before launch.
What does an agent cost to run each month?
For most small and mid-size business volumes, AI model usage runs from tens of dollars to a few hundred dollars per month. We estimate cost per task during scoping and build with running cost in mind, so there are no surprises on your bill.
Will the agent make mistakes?
Sometimes. So do people. We build approval steps, logging, and fallbacks so errors get caught before a customer sees them, and every agent hands off to a human when it is unsure. Monthly reviews catch patterns and fix them.