An unintended side effect of writing for Zapier is that I can never look at everyday tasks the same way. Busywork breaks me. Manual data entry makes me weep. Long, complex business processes that require human handoffs at every step have me howling at the moon like a morose dog.
I've developed this viewpoint because I now understand workflow automation in all its glory—and I know the kind of impact it can have on businesses. In an effort to save your team hours and dollars (and an opportunity to get on my soapbox), I've compiled five of my favorite AI business process automation examples—inspired by actual Zapier customers.
Table of contents:
What is workflow automation?
Workflow automation is the process of streamlining and automating a series of repeatable tasks within the software you use. There are two components at work:
An automation is a task that runs automatically—think, when "A" happens, "B" happens.
A workflow is a repeatable sequence of specific steps that accomplish a process. For example, one of your processes could be invoicing customers after a sale. The workflow behind that could be: Create an invoice in QuickBooks, email that invoice to the customer, and update your data after you receive payment.
Workflow automation combines those two components so tasks get done without human intervention. So, in our invoicing example, you could automate all of those workflow steps so your customers get billed, your data gets updated, and you receive payment—all without having to lift a finger (after you create the automated workflow, that is).
Zapier is an automation tool that can help you build and maintain automated workflows in any area of your business, across any department, without any code. Below, I'll dig into a few examples of workflow automation with Zapier across sales, marketing, HR, IT, and customer support.
Sales workflow automation example
Real estate investment firm GG Homes was receiving thousands of calls from homeowners every month, but the company's sales reps were drowning in leads, and the team had to spend more time managing a CRM than selling.
Jerry Yu, GG Homes' VP of Technology, knew it was time to turn to automation. Jerry integrated Zapier with Whispir, ChatGPT, and Salesforce to build a system that transcribes, analyzes, and enriches lead data—a process that helped his sales team spend more time on what they do best.
Jerry's automated workflow works like this:
GG Homes records every incoming phone call. Those recordings are automatically sent to Whispir, which converts the recording to text.
Zapier passes the text to ChatGPT, which evaluates lead quality and determines key information, such as the prospect's name, address, and timeline.
Zapier then passes this information to Salesforce, ensuring sales reps have key data to use in follow-up calls.
The result was more than just a happier sales team; with this automation, GG Homes saw a 25% increase in closed deals, a 15% increase in sales rep productivity, and 100 hours saved weekly.
If you'd like to follow GG Homes' lead, you can build a lead capture automation with this Zapier template. It collects your leads from multiple sources, standardizes the data, and adds it to your CRM—no more manual data entry.
Marketing workflow automation example
Sometimes ideas outpace output. When that happens, you can either hire 27 new employees, or just do what Easy Aiz did and embrace some well-placed automation.
Easy Aiz is a fast-paced content marketing agency where blog topics come as easily as breathing. That's usually a good thing, but when a team of 50 can't keep up, quality ideas can slip through the cracks.
Before Zapier, Easy Aiz took up to five hours to execute a new blog from writing to publication. The company tried this new workflow with Zapier:
First, one of Easy Aiz's clients drops a voice note in a dedicated Slack channel with a new topic or blog idea.
When this happens, AI by Zapier analyzes the note and creates optimized content with a blog title.
Imagine API, integrated with Midjourney, analyzes the content and creates a thumbnail image.
Zapier compiles everything into a WordPress draft and sends it to the client for review.
If the article passes, the post is published automatically and shared across the client's social pages.
After adopting this new process, Easy Aiz started seeing a 5x faster process from ideation to publication, saving over 100 hours per month on content creation.
Curious how Zapier can help with your marketing process? Try this AI content idea generator template that can help you brainstorm, generate topics, and automatically store them in a Zapier Table, allowing you to complete your upcoming content calendar in minutes.
Submit content ideas and have OpenAI generate additional and related ideas automatically.
HR workflow automation example
When companies grow, HR can be one of the first departments to feel the squeeze. A small human resources team could answer employee questions over Slack; but when you have a thriving business (and a thriving workforce), you need a more elegant solution in place.
After joining the Alma team, Elyssa Lakin, Manager of People Systems, Operations, & Automation, quickly realized the team needed a change. There wasn't a designated help desk, SLA system, or HR analytics—and employee queries would routinely fall through the cracks.Â
In response, Elyssa built workflow automations using Asana and Zapier to create a custom help desk, reduce support workload, and capture employee sentiment at scale.
Here's a look at her help desk workflow:
When an employee submits an HR request through Asana, Zapier automatically routes the ticket to the right person and establishes due dates based on Alma’s business calendar and custom SLAs.
If someone is out of office, Zapier adds a backup as a follower on the ticket to ensure the request is handled without delay.
Each ticket is routed to a team-specific dashboard, enabling HR managers to monitor workload, SLA performance, and analyze trending ticket topics.
Through Elyssa's work with Zapier, she achieved a 45% reduction in HR tickets via self-service and saved Alma $50,000 by eliminating the need for third-party help desk software.
If you want to build an automated HR powerhouse like Alma, try out this AI-powered hiring material template. With it, you can automate your hiring process and create job postings, keep recruiters and your HR team informed through Slack, and focus on the applicants—not the paperwork.
Make kicking off hiring a breeze with AI-generated job descriptions, application questions, and interview guides.
IT workflow automation example
Internal IT teams are the unsung heroes of an organization. They keep crucial systems running and secure, while fielding the types of employee technical questions that should have been answered in middle school. That ecosystem works if you have a large team to balance the workload; it falls apart if you're understaffed.
Remote had that problem: The business grew to 1,800 employees with only three people on the IT support team. To keep pace with the 1,100 monthly help desk tickets, the company turned to Zapier.
Marcus Saito, Head of IT and AI Automation at Remote, helped build a Zapier workflow automation that powered a new, custom-built help desk:
When employees have a question, they submit a request via Slack, email, or a self-service chatbot.
Zapier triggers an automation that prompts Okta to fetch user profile details such as department and role, and then uses ChatGPT to determine the ticket priority and category.
A new request page is auto-generated in Notion, where IT tracks and updates the status. It's also stored in Zapier Tables, which serves as the knowledge base for the data and powers the next step.
From there, Zapier Agents step in to reference past ticket info in Tables to generate a resolution.Â
The employee is notified in Slack with a link to the ticket and, later, the resolution.
IT team members can claim tickets by reacting with emojis in Slack, which triggers a Zap to update ownership in Notion.
The results are impressive: 27.5% of Remote's help desk tickets are closed automatically, saving over 600 hours every month on IT support.
If you'd like to build a system that streamlines your IT operations, check out this help desk automation template. It integrates AI, chatbots, and your internal communication systems to get your employees answers quickly, while preserving your IT team's sanity.
Improve your IT support with AI-powered responses, automatic ticket prioritization, and knowledge base updates.
Customer support workflow automation example
Building a competitive NBA team will get fans in the door, but creating an outstanding fan experience keeps them coming back for more.
The guest management team for the Portland Trail Blazers has the tall task of evaluating up to 14 post-event surveys every week. Before Zapier, the team had three different departments spending up to 50 hours per week reviewing survey results—and fan complaints were frequently slipping through the cracks. David Long, Vice President of Digital and Innovation for the Portland Trail Blazers, knew he needed to make a change.
David leaned on Zapier to help build an automated system for triage and personalized responses:
When a guest submits a survey, Qualtrics collects the responses.
A trained GPT assistant reviews the response and assesses sentiment and severity.
Responses are routed into department-specific Slack channels.
When a team member sees a survey that needs a personal response, they indicate it with an emoji.
The workflow then sends the survey back to OpenAI.
The AI assistant drafts a personalized email.
Zapier creates a draft in the responder's Outlook.
The result is less time spent juggling responses and more time on action: the team cut their guest feedback review time by 94% and maintains a first response time of under 24 hours.
You, just like the Portland Trail Blazers, should focus on improving your customer support workflows. Once you can perform excellent customer service, turn it into a revenue-generating activity with our sales lead template. You can use this template to automatically identify support tickets that contain buying signals, allowing you to route new leads to sales seamlessly.
Identify whether support tickets contain buying signals so you can easily route new leads to sales.
Orchestrate business process automation with Zapier
You don't need to be a CS grad to implement workflow automation across your team—you just need an intuitive, no-code automation partner like Zapier. Whether you're a small business that wants to do more with less or an enterprise operation that wants to break down data silos, Zapier can be exactly what you need to build time-saving and revenue-building workflows.
Explore a few more Zapier templates you can tweak or plug-and-play directly into your processes, or dive headfirst and build your own workflow.
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