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Problem: Too many time spent from notifying the client on delays

- The client is a small site construction company (3-4 team members).
- Their work on site makes them highly susceptible to weather-related and other operational disruptions, causing frequent project delays.
- A significant amount of time (average of half a day per week) is spent by the Site Team Lead on drafting and sending delay notification emails.
- Existing methods for tracking delays and notifying clients were manual and fragmented.

Approach:

Step 1: Process Understanding
- Understand the existing workflow project tracking, scheduling, and information storage to understand their primary tool. In this case, the primary tool is Notion.
- The end goal is to generate all necessary delay notice reports on SafetyCulture and email drafts ready on Gmail.
 
Step 2: Integration
- Build Notion systems to handle the client information (email, name) and delay logging (date, reasons, images)
- Integrate Make.com to automatically read information from Notion to generate SafetyCulture report.
- Once again, integrate Make.com to download SafetyCulture report as pdf and attach under ready-to-send draft emails.

Results:

- Reduced the time spent on drafting delay notification emails from half a day per week to approximately 5 minutes per week.
- Achieved this efficiency with a monthly operational cost of less than $5 on Make.com.
- Ensured timely and consistent client communication, as delay notices are drafted promptly, leading to happier clients due to proactive updates.
- Reallocated the Site Team Lead's time to value-adding work for the team, boosting overall operational efficiency.

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Streamlining Contractor Invoicing

Problem:

The client engaged numerous contractors, each operating on an hourly rate contract.
The process of creating individual invoices for each contractor was excessively long, especially given the number of contractors.
Invoicing was further complicated by complex formulas and varying rates, making calculation prone to errors and delays.

Approach:

Step 1: Current Workflow Analysis & Refinement
- Project Management: The client stored their project list and rate within Notion.
- Previous Time Tracking Issues: They previously used Tally for time tracking, but it was deemed unreliable for accurate billing.
- Manual Invoicing: Invoices were generated using a Google Sheet template and then manually uploaded to Xero for accounting.
 
Step 2: Improve the tool and process
- We collaborated with the business team to replace Tally with Toggl for more accurate and trustworthy time tracking.
- The goal was to establish a solution where time tracking data would automatically generate weekly invoices for review and upload to Xero.
 
Step 3: Integrated Automation Solution
- Project names and rate from Notion were automatically synced to Toggl.
- Contractors utilized the Toggl app to accurately track their time spent on each project.
- On a weekly basis, Make.com was used to pull the time tracking data from Toggl, automatically creating individual invoices for each contractor.
- Make.com further automated the process by sending the generated invoices directly to Xero for the finance team's consolidation and review.

Results:

- The team now spends no more time on creating invoices, freeing up significant operational hours.
- The combined monthly maintenance cost for Toggl and Make.com is less than $15.
- The transition to Toggl resulted in more accurate time tracking results, leading to precise billing.
- The entire invoicing process was significantly streamlined with the finance team, enhancing efficiency and collaboration.

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Inbox Overload to Instant Response

Problem: Important emails are not getting important attention

- The client operates a multifaceted online presence, encompassing various websites & stores
- They receive a daily deluge of emails containing product and service feedback from customers.
- A substantial portion of their team's effort is consumed by the manual and time-intensive task of distinguishing genuine feedback from spam or irrelevant communications.
- Crucially, this manual filtering process often leads to critical customer communications—such as those detailing product or service disruptions, urgent negative feedback, or time-sensitive requests—not receiving the immediate attention they require.

Approach:

Step 1: Current Workflow Analysis
- The client currently utilizes Gorgias to consolidate multiple email inboxes into a single, integrated system.
- Slack serves as the primary platform for internal communication and notifications within the team.
- Previously, the team manually flagged emails in Notion based on two key criteria: their urgency (urgent/non-urgent) and their sentiment (bad, good, or neutral).
- The objective was to automate this prioritization, ensuring that emails categorized as urgent or having a negative sentiment receive immediate attention.
 
Step 2: Automated Solution with n8n & AI
- Incoming emails from Gorgias are received and processed via n8n.
- An AI agent is employed to automatically detect the urgency and sentiment of each email, and to generate a concise summary.
- Emails are automatically logged in Notion, pre-tagged with their determined urgency and sentiment.
- For emails identified as urgent or possessing a negative sentiment, immediate notifications are dispatched to the relevant Slack channel.

Results:

- The team's number of tickets handled increased by 50%, primarily because they are no longer required to filter spam or work on unimportant emails.
- Customer communication significantly improved due to the ability to provide immediate attention to critical inquiries.

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Nguyen Doan Hoang Long

[email protected] - (84) 935 209 518 - HCMC