Eliminating the manual work that was slowing everything down
A customer operations team was spending 40% of their time on manual, repetitive tasks that could be automated. Resolution times were slow, errors were frequent, and team morale was suffering. I audited 12 core workflows and redesigned them with automation and clearer ownership.
The team had grown from 15 to 45 people over 3 years but their processes hadn't scaled with them. What worked at 15 people was now creating bottlenecks, errors, and frustration at 45. Leadership knew something was broken but didn't know where to start.
Manual data entry between Salesforce and Zendesk, no automated routing, unclear ownership for edge cases, 3-day average resolution time, 15+ hours per week of manual reporting, and no SLA tracking.
Conducted a 2-week workflow audit, shadowing team members across all 12 core processes
Mapped each workflow end-to-end, documenting every manual step, decision point, and handoff
Calculated time spent on each step and identified the highest-value automation opportunities
Interviewed team leads to understand pain points, workarounds, and tribal knowledge
Reviewed error logs and escalation data to identify where failures were most common
Redesigned 12 workflows with clear ownership, decision trees, and automation where appropriate. Built n8n automations to handle data sync between Salesforce and Zendesk, automated routing based on issue type, and automated reporting. Created SOPs for all redesigned workflows. Ran a 2-week parallel operation period to validate before full cutover.
The most surprising finding was how much tribal knowledge existed in the team: workarounds and shortcuts that nobody had ever documented. Capturing that knowledge and building it into the official process was as important as the automation itself. The team went from feeling like they were fighting the system to feeling like the system was working for them.