What can I automate in my business right now that would actually save my employees time?
If you want automation to actually save your employees time, start with the tasks they repeat every day: entering lead information, sending follow-up messages, scheduling appointments, reminding customers, answering common questions, updating records, and requesting reviews.
The goal is not to automate your employees. It is to automate the little pieces of work that keep pulling them away from the jobs you hired them to do.
That distinction matters.
Research from Asana’s Anatomy of Work has repeatedly highlighted how much employee time gets consumed by what it calls “work about work,” including coordination, searching for information, and managing processes rather than doing skilled work. In its 2023 global research, workers estimated that better processes could save them nearly five hours per week.
Microsoft has found a similar problem. Its Work Trend Index research found that employees using Microsoft 365 can be interrupted every two minutes during the workday by meetings, emails, or notifications.
So where can you start removing some of that noise?
1. Can I automate what happens when a new lead contacts us?
Yes. This is one of the first things most small businesses should automate.
Think about what happens when someone fills out a form on your website right now. Does an employee need to:
- Check the email notification?
- Copy the person’s information somewhere else?
- Create a record in the CRM?
- Tell another employee about the lead?
- Send a thank-you email?
- Send a text message?
- Create a reminder to follow up tomorrow?
If so, most of that process can happen automatically.
A system like Surge’s CRM and lead capture platform can collect the lead, create the contact record, place the opportunity into the appropriate sales pipeline, notify an employee, and start the follow-up process.
Your employee still handles the conversation that matters. They just do not have to spend several minutes preparing for it.
That is exactly the type of repetitive administrative work worth targeting. McKinsey’s research on workplace automation has found that repetitive and predictable activities are among the clearest opportunities for automation.
2. Can follow-up emails and text messages happen automatically?
Absolutely, and this can save a surprising amount of time.
Your employees should not have to remember to manually send the same messages over and over:
“Thanks for contacting us.”
“Are you still interested?”
“Here’s the information you requested.”
“Just checking whether you’d like to schedule.”
“Your appointment is tomorrow.”
These messages can be triggered automatically based on what the customer does.
For example, someone submits a quote request at 8:47 p.m. Instead of waiting until an employee opens their inbox the next morning, a workflow automation can immediately send a personalized response and let the customer know what happens next.
You can also build longer email and SMS follow-up sequences for prospects who have not responded yet.
This does not mean bombarding people with canned messages. It means making sure routine communication happens consistently while your employees focus on conversations that actually require a person.
The need is real. A Zapier survey of small business owners found that nearly a quarter were spending five to ten hours per week on administrative work. Eliminating repetitive tasks was widely associated with both time savings and improved productivity.
3. Can I stop employees from going back and forth scheduling appointments?
In many businesses, yes.
Scheduling sounds simple until you add up all the emails, phone calls, texts, rescheduling requests, cancellations, and reminders.
Instead, you can give customers access to an online appointment scheduling system that shows available times and lets them choose an appointment themselves.
Once they book, the system can:
- Add the appointment to the calendar
- Send a confirmation
- Send reminder emails or texts
- Notify the appropriate employee
- Trigger additional instructions
- Follow up if the appointment is canceled
Your staff gets involved when their expertise is needed, not simply because someone needs to find an open spot on a calendar.
That also helps reduce interruptions. Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index found that nearly half of employees surveyed described their work as chaotic and fragmented. Reducing small coordination tasks is one practical way to give employees more uninterrupted time.
4. What about forms and data entry?
If an employee is taking information a customer already submitted and typing it into another system, look closely at that process.
It may be unnecessary.
Custom online forms can collect customer information and send it directly into your CRM. Depending on your process, the submission can also update fields, assign the contact, trigger a workflow, create an opportunity, or alert an employee.
For example, instead of an employee receiving a new-customer form as a PDF and manually entering the details, the information can already be attached to the customer’s record when your team opens it.
Automating data movement is especially valuable because it does two things at once: it saves time and reduces the chance of information being copied incorrectly.
5. Can I automate answers to basic customer questions?
Yes, as long as you are thoughtful about which questions you automate.
Your employees probably answer some version of the same questions every week:
“What time do you close?”
“Do you service my area?”
“How do I schedule?”
“What should I bring to my appointment?”
“Do you offer this service?”
Those are good candidates for an AI chat widget.
A website chatbot can answer straightforward questions, capture contact information, direct visitors to the right resource, and help move someone toward an appointment.
That does not mean every customer interaction should be handed to AI. Complicated questions, complaints, unusual circumstances, pricing discussions, and sensitive conversations may still need a person.
The objective is to keep your employees from repeatedly typing answers to questions your business has already answered hundreds of times.
Microsoft describes this kind of repetitive coordination and administrative activity as a “coordination tax” in its research on AI and modern work. Automating simple information retrieval is one way to reduce that tax.
6. Can asking customers for reviews be automated too?
Yes, and this is another easy place to eliminate a repetitive employee task.
Instead of expecting an employee to remember to ask every happy customer for a review, build the request into the customer journey.
For example:
Job completed → customer receives thank-you message → review request is sent → customer receives a follow-up if needed.
A reputation management system can help make that process consistent without requiring an employee to manually send every request.
Your team can still personally engage with customers when it makes sense. Automation simply makes sure the routine request does not get forgotten during a busy day.
7. What should I NOT automate?
Do not start with the most complicated process in your company.
Start with the annoying one.
Look for tasks employees complain about because they are repetitive, predictable, and happen several times every day.
Good automation candidates usually have three characteristics:
- The task happens frequently.
- The employee follows roughly the same steps every time.
- The task does not require much judgment.
Be more cautious with decisions involving unusual customer situations, financial judgment, employee management, sensitive information, or anything where context significantly changes the correct response.
Automation should remove busywork, not remove good judgment.
How do I figure out what to automate first?
Ask every employee one simple question:
“What do you do over and over every week that feels like a waste of your time?”
You will probably get answers quickly.
Write those tasks down. Then estimate how often each happens and how many minutes it takes.
A seven-minute task performed 10 times per day is consuming almost six employee hours every week.
You do not need to automate your entire company to see a difference. Fix two or three repetitive processes first, measure the time saved, then move to the next bottleneck.
That is where platforms like Surge by Thrive can help. Instead of stitching together separate tools for your CRM, forms, appointments, email, SMS, customer follow-up, reviews, and automation, you can manage those processes through one connected system.
If you’re not sure which processes are costing your team the most time, contact Surge by Thrive and we can help identify the best places to start.
Or, if you’d rather see how these automations actually work, request a live Surge demo.
The best automation is not the one that sounds the most impressive.
It is the one your employees stop having to think about tomorrow.