At Viva, executive assistants (EAs) play a crucial role. The company specializes in hiring, training, and matching high-caliber remote EAs with executives from rapidly growing companies supported by major VC firms like Sequoia and a16z. However, Viva faced an internal challenge: how to enhance their EAs' efficiency while expanding their impact within the organization.

Dania Maduro, an Executive Assistant at Viva, explains the mission: "Our aim is to create meaningful job opportunities for women across Latin America, while also supporting our go-to-market team with the same level of excellence we offer our clients."

About Viva:

• Employees: 51-200

• Industry: Business consulting and services

• Location: San Francisco, CA

As Viva's team grew to 140, the workload for their internal EAs increased significantly. Dania, who assists one of Viva's co-founders, realized that the solution wasn't just hiring more staff. It was about enabling her team to automate repetitive tasks using AI, freeing up time for more strategic work.

This realization led to a company-wide initiative, spearheaded by Dania, to develop and share automated workflows using Zapier. "We're creating a repository of AI-driven workflows for everyone," Dania shares. "The question is, what can we automate today that we're doing manually?"

Key Achievements at Viva:

• 50% reduction in time spent on pre-briefing meetings

• Significant hours saved on resume formatting and follow-up workflows

• Adoption of an automation-first culture across the company

Streamlining Meeting Preparations

Before automation, preparing for meetings consumed a lot of time for Dania and her team. "A pre-meeting briefing (PMB) could take 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the call," she says. With three to five calls weekly, the time added up quickly.

To speed things up, Dania created a Zapier workflow that automates PMBs. When a new Google Calendar event with external attendees is scheduled, AI gathers relevant details about the attendees. These details are then organized into a templated Google Doc for meeting prep, enhanced with additional context about the lead's company.

Dania now completes PMBs in half the time, with confidence in their accuracy and presentation. "It literally saves me 50% of the time," she notes. "I just review and ensure everything's accurate."

Enhancing EA Resumes Efficiently

Viva's EAs undergo a customer readiness process, which includes reformatting their resumes into a polished template. As sales increased, manually updating each resume became impractical.

"It was a good problem to have," Dania mentions. "But we needed a quicker process for these resumes."

Dania developed another Zapier workflow to tackle this. It extracts key resume details using AI, transfers them to a Google Sheet, and then populates a custom resume template in Google Slides. This system transforms raw resumes into polished ones swiftly, maintaining quality and speed. "We can now handle the volume efficiently," Dania says, "ensuring prospects that their EA match is perfectly tailored."

Creating Tailored Follow-Ups from Transcripts

When customer success managers (CSMs) needed to send follow-ups after meetings, reviewing each call transcript and crafting personalized notes was time-consuming. Even using ChatGPT for assistance caused delays.

Dania saw an opportunity for another Zapier workflow. She created one that triggers whenever a new transcript for a CSM's call is available. AI then generates a follow-up email, including action items for the EA, ready for quick review.

"Now, instead of writing emails from scratch, our CSMs review and personalize," she explains. "It's a significant relief for them."

Fostering an Automation-First Culture

Beyond individual workflows, Dania's proudest achievement is the cultural shift towards automation at Viva. The aim is not just to automate tasks but to enhance productivity organization-wide.

"When tackling problems, we think AI and automation first," Dania says. "Even if building takes time, the long-term savings are worth it. We see the future as EAs working alongside AI, with Zapier as our foundation."

This mindset has sparked creativity throughout Viva. Team members who were initially unfamiliar with automation are now proposing ideas, refining workflows, and becoming more comfortable with tools like Zapier and ChatGPT.

"We began with a simple Google Sheets to Google Docs flow and asked, 'What else can we do?' It turns out, a lot."

Looking ahead, Dania's roadmap for further automation includes:

• More Slack-triggered Zaps, like adding people to meetings with emoji reactions

• Using Zapier Tables for better data management

• Training teammates to use shared templates and workflows independently

With AI and automation in their arsenal, Dania and the Viva team are demonstrating that intentional scaling leads to increased productivity.