When Adnan Khan, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Viva, set an ambitious goal for his team, it wasn’t about revenue or expansion. It was about skills. “We wanted our Executive Assistants (EAs) to be the best in the world at using AI,” he said.
The first step was simple: build one Zap that made an assistant’s daily workflow easier. That one Zap became the spark for a cultural shift inside Viva.
“Zapier has been multiple steps ahead of us in their AI adoption journey,” Adnan said. “It allowed us not to reinvent the wheel, but instead follow the example of a leader in the space.”
Today, Viva’s EAs don’t just use AI sometimes; they build with it daily. The company has developed a competency framework, a learning path, and a growing repository of EA-specific use cases. The result: a team of EAs who are more efficient, creative, and confident in solving problems.
Viva's results, by the numbers
100% of Viva’s executive assistants have built their first Zap
Daily office hours established to mentor and support Zap building
AI competency framework created, guiding growth from explorer to builder
Growing EA use case repository shared across the team
Cultural shift of making AI and automation a part of daily work
Starting with one Zap
Big changes often begin small. For Viva, it started with a single Zap. Each assistant was tasked with creating one AI automation that would improve their own workflow. The exercise wasn’t theoretical, it had to deliver tangible benefits.
That first Zap showed the team what was possible. “Once they experienced the benefit directly, it stopped being an abstract concept. They saw time saved and tasks simplified," said Adnan.
From there, Viva launched daily office hours. Experienced builders mentored their peers, helping everyone on the team build at least one Zap. By the end of the initiative, every EA had moved from consumer of automation to creator.
Designing an AI learning path
But Viva didn’t stop at one Zap per EA. They wanted AI fluency to be part of every EA’s professional development. So they created an AI competency framework, inspired by Zapier’s own journey.
The framework covers three core areas:
Prompting: How to get the best results from AI
Automation: Building workflows with Zapier
Business acumen: Understanding when and why to automate
Each EA follows a learning path from “explorer” to “builder,” gaining confidence as they progress. “We used Zapier as the backbone of our AI learning path,” Adnan said. “It gave us a structure to make sure everyone could grow together.”
To help each EA jump in faster, Viva built a repository of AI use cases tied to specific EA responsibilities.
Each use case is documented and shared internally. EAs can learn from one another’s work and adapt existing workflows instead of starting from scratch. The library continues to grow as new automations are built.
“It’s not just conceptual anymore,” Adnan explains. “It’s tangible impact on their day-to-day workflow.”
The briefing generator that cuts writing time in half
One of those day-to-day workflows? Writing pre-meeting briefings (PMBs). For Dania Maduro, an Executive Assistant at Viva, it was a necessary but time-intensive task.
“A pre-meeting briefing could take me anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes,” she said. Multiply that by several meetings a week, and the hours stack up quickly.
To streamline the process, Dania created a Zap that pulls attendee data from Google Calendar events, uses AI to gather relevant company information (like funding stage or employee count), and generates a polished Google Doc based on a PMB template. She simply reviews and sends it.
“It literally saves me 50% of the time. I just check for accuracy. The panic is gone," said Dania.
An automatic primp and polish for EA resumes
Viva also needed to reformat resumes quickly for customer-facing readiness, a step critical to its high-touch EA-client matching process.
“It was a good problem to have,” Dania said. “But we needed to process these resumes quickly.”
She built a Zap that uses AI to extract resume content, transfers it to Google Sheets, and then populates a slide deck template in Google Slides, giving each resume a consistent, professional look.
“We can now handle the volume without sacrificing quality or speed, giving prospects total confidence that their EA match is tailored to what they need," said Dania.
Drafting personalized follow-ups from customer transcripts
Customer success managers (CSMs) also benefit from Dania’s automation mindset. After every client call, CSMs needed to write personalized follow-up emails, a task that required reviewing lengthy transcripts.
Dania created a Zap that triggers whenever a new transcript is uploaded. AI analyzes the conversation and drafts a tailored follow-up email, including action items for the assigned EA. The email lands in the CSM’s inbox, ready for a final review.
“Now, instead of writing emails from scratch, our CSMs just review and personalize. It’s a big lift off their plates.”
Changing culture, not just workflows
Zapier’s impact at Viva extends beyond efficiency. It has reshaped the company’s culture. EAs who once accepted inefficiencies as “part of the job” now actively look for ways to eliminate them.
“Zapier fundamentally changed how our team approaches problem-solving,” Adnan said. “Every automation makes their work easier, and that momentum inspires them to keep experimenting. We wanted to be the best in the world at using AI. Zapier gave us the tools and the inspiration to actually make it happen.”
About Viva
Company size: 200+ employees
Industry: Professional services
Location: United States
Adnan Khan is a 2025 Zappy Awards winner in the Z-Suite AI Transformation Leader of the Year category.
