A practical UK demo checklist for CRM, email and AI

Start with a business outcome

Choose one process that crosses your systems: an enquiry becomes a qualified opportunity, receives relevant follow-up and reaches a named delivery owner. Give each supplier the same fictional dataset, expected result and exclusions. Include two contacts at one company, a duplicate, a recent purchaser and an unsubscribed recipient. Decide which requirements are essential before seeing scores. A documented feature earns capability credit even when it needs a paid edition; compare the commercial package separately.

• Ask the demonstrator to show the result in records and logs, not only a workflow diagram.
• Record the exact edition, add-ons and configuration needed beside each successful check.

Make CRM relationships and controls visible

Create a contact, connect the organisation and open a deal. Change the amount as a second user, then find the actor and timestamp in the history. Try moving the deal forward without mandatory information. Export records with identifiers and rebuild the relationships in a spreadsheet. HubSpot documents associations and activity links; Salesforce documents record IDs and related fields in Data Loader exports. These are useful starting points, but your own custom objects and permissions still need a demonstration.

• Use a restricted salesperson account to test another team's visibility.
• Ask who receives delivery ownership when the deal is won and what customer context survives.

Test an audience while it changes

Build an audience of people who clicked a particular email within thirty days and have not purchased. Add a new click, then a purchase, and inspect membership again. Run a welcome journey with a delay and different follow-ups. Place a purchase between the delay and the next send. Check whether the platform ends the journey, skips a message or leaves the person waiting. Klaviyo documents that failed profile filters can skip actions while the contact continues through the flow; that distinction matters when later steps change data or send another channel.

• Repeat the event to check re-entry and duplicate messages.
• Unsubscribe during the delay and verify each channel's separate suppression behaviour.

Ask for operational evidence

Open recipient-level delivery and engagement results, then retrieve an example through the API. Check timestamps, identifiers, pagination and retention rather than accepting an aggregate chart as an export. Test who can prepare content and who can send or activate it. Omnisend documents separate content-creation and sending permissions; use that distinction to test your own approval process. An API export may have a practical limit: Intercom's conversation endpoint returns only the latest five hundred parts of a conversation.

• Ask how longer histories are recovered and reconcile a sample export against the interface.
• Check which actions appear in audit history and which automated updates are excluded.

Treat an AI agent as a controlled operator

Give the agent one approved knowledge source and one restricted action. Ask an answerable question, an unsupported question and a request outside its permission. Change the source and test again. Before allowing a consequential action, require the intended approval and inspect the resulting log. n8n documents human review for tool calls; Intercom documents authentication checks and token-refresh recovery for connectors. Neither removes the need to test your own failed API response, expired credentials, escalation context and repeated execution.

• Keep a reusable set of successful, ambiguous and failure cases for each configuration change.
• Inspect actual usage and agree a budget, escalation owner and rollback process.

Close the commercial and UK questions

Request a written configuration covering GBP billing or the actual foreign currency, VAT treatment, renewal, contacts, sends, seats, API limits and AI consumption. For messaging, confirm UK sender and number options, reply handling and provider charges. Document the contracting entity, processing arrangements, storage locations and support hours against your requirements. A UK office or English interface establishes neither every local capability nor your legal compliance. Keep unresolved items visible and obtain supplier answers before making the final selection.

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