Every business grapples with the challenge of doing more with less. Whether you're managing sales, operations, or customer support, finding smarter ways to work is key to staying competitive. For Pretto—a mortgage loan brokerage company in France—automation became the solution to unlock efficiency and innovation.
The way we're using Zapier at Pretto is really deeply rooted into our DNA. Everyone has a Zapier account, and it's encouraged for them to automate their jobs.
Etienne Batise, Engineering Manager at Pretto.
From the beginning, Pretto chose to build with automation, so employees weren't stuck spending hours on monotonous, repetitive tasks. Instead, they're spending their time developing their skills, growing within their roles, and doing strategic work—creating more efficient and happier employees. Automation has also allowed the company to stay agile by reducing its toolkit and empowering even non-technical employees to build workflows.
When inflation spiked in 2022 and threatened the market, they were able to design an entirely new way of working in less than a week, without the help of a developer.
"As a growing startup, Zapier is the go-to solution for all our operations people to kick off, monitor, and iterate on new ideas rapidly. The more we can do without code the better," said Etienne. "We have so many Zaps, it's already proven its worth. We've automated many parts of our business without having to hire developers to do it."
About Pretto:
Company size: 51–200 employees
Industry: Mortgage brokerage
Location: Paris, France
Pivoting operations during a housing market crisis
In 2022, a financial crisis in France created a difficult market for brokers. Mortgage loan rates skyrocketed from ~1% to ~5%, halting the housing market. This freeze left the independent brokers that make up Pretto's client base unable to work. To address the challenge, Pretto pivoted to consultancy services and automated the essential part of this new offering: creating consultancy contracts, all powered by Zapier.
Here's how the automation works:
Document creation: A Zap generates the legal document when the CTA button is clicked.
Signature process: The Zap triggers the signature process in Dropbox Sign.
System updates: The Zap updates the CRM and sends a notification to a dedicated Slack channel.
Approval step: Manual approval in Google Sheets ensures all the information is correct before sending the contract to the appropriate parties.
By offering consultancy services, Pretto provided brokers with a new way to generate income despite the housing market freeze. And it worked. Within a year, consultancy contracts had grown to represent 10% of Pretto's annual revenue.
Building a smarter customer support feedback process
Pretto also uses Zapier to power a fully customized customer support feedback system—saving $10,000 annually by avoiding traditional ticketing software. This flexible approach streamlines workflows, speeds up data access, and integrates seamlessly with existing tools, all without the need for onboarding. Here's how it works:
Feedback collection: A Zap triggers when a customer submits feedback through Typeform.
Classification and insights: ChatGPT classifies the type of feedback and fetches relevant information from Pretto's databases.
Notification: The system formats a new message, and the relevant people are notified in Slack.
Logging and analysis: All feedback is logged in a Google Sheet for later analysis.
The process doesn't stop there. A separate Zap alerts the team if an issue remains unresolved. And another Zap runs monthly to feed recent messages into ChatGPT, which summarizes the top ten customer pain points. These insights have helped shape project priorities for over two years.
The framework has been replicated across departments like back-office teams, sales operations, onboarding, and billing. "By being able to tailor our processes, we kept them simple and fully integrated with our daily tools like Salesforce, Slack, Gmail, and Notion. It makes daily life easier for everyone," Etienne explained.
Streamlining complicated, error-prone data transfer processes
Out of the hundreds of Zaps Pretto uses, one of the most effective is 63 steps long, and it automates complex data transfers between 16 different banks. Despite its complexity, it was created in just a few days by a non-technical employee with some SQL knowledge. Here's how the workflow operates:
Data retrieval and formatting: The Zap retrieves relevant data from Pretto's databases, formats it, and sends it to ChatGPT to create clear, readable documents.
Email automation: The system generates an email with ChatGPT and sends the documents to the banks.
Fallback system: A fallback system handles any cases requiring manual oversight, which currently accounts for less than 10% of cases (with a goal of reducing this to under 1%).
"[Before this workflow] It was hard, tedious, and error-prone work," Etienne said. With the Zap in place, the work gets done faster and is more accurate. It's a win for everyone and "hugely important for the company," according to Etienne. This Zap saves Pretto the equivalent of one full-time employee annually.
Pass the baton with confidence
One pattern that Etienne has found in Pretto's use of Zapier is that they rely on it to pass the baton between teams. It doesn't matter how fast one team can run if the baton gets dropped during a handoff. "If the baton falls, you've lost," Etienne said.
By relying on Zapier, people can work fast and hand off any process or task efficiently. "It's incredibly important when growing a company," said Etienne. But perhaps the best result from having all 200 employees encouraged to use Zapier is that they're happier.
When you give employees the right tool to automate their low-value work, they do it and they do it happily. In a snap, the whole company gets more efficient and happier at the same time.
Etienne Batise
Results like these show the transformative impact of automation at Pretto:
10% annual revenue: Consultancy contracts created via Zapier represented 10% of Pretto's annual revenue.
Time savings: A 63-step Zap saved Pretto the equivalent of one full-time employee per year.
Two years of insights: Feedback automation with ChatGPT has provided customer insights for over two years, aligning product development with customer needs.
