Smart Onboarding Pipeline
Automating a 12-step manual client onboarding process end-to-end
Role
AI Automation Specialist
Client
Creative Agency (Confidential)
Timeline
3 Weeks
Key Result
15 hrs saved per week
01
The Challenge
A creative agency's client onboarding was a painful 12-step manual process: intake emails sent manually, data copied between spreadsheets and CRM, project briefs written from scratch each time, and team notifications sent one by one on Slack. Things got missed constantly. New clients waited 4–5 days before receiving their first deliverable. The ops team was drowning in admin.
02
The Approach
I mapped the entire onboarding flow, identified every manual handoff, and built an automated pipeline that handles each step — from intake form submission to team briefing.
Process Mapping & Audit
Documented all 12 onboarding steps, categorized them by: can be automated fully, can be AI-assisted, or requires human judgment. 9 of 12 steps were candidates for automation.
AI-Powered Intake Form
Built a Typeform intake that feeds data into Make. On submission, ChatGPT auto-classifies the project type (branding, web, campaign, etc.) and extracts structured fields from free-text responses.
CRM & Sheet Sync
Make automatically creates a CRM entry, populates a project tracker sheet, and assigns a project code — eliminating all manual data entry.
Smart Email Sequences
Based on project type classification, Gmail sends the appropriate onboarding email sequence: welcome, discovery call link, required assets checklist, and contract draft — all personalized.
Auto-Generated Brief + Slack Notification
ChatGPT generates a structured project brief from the intake data, saves it to Google Drive, and sends a Slack notification to the assigned team with the brief link — all within 3 minutes of form submission.
Tools Used
03
The Results
15 hrs
saved per week in admin
5 days → 1
client onboarding time
0
missed onboarding steps since launch
< 3 min
from form submit to team briefing
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