Most businesses that come to us wanting to hire a Virtual Assistant already have automations running. Usually it’s something like this: a contact form sends leads into a spreadsheet, Calendly drops meetings onto a calendar, and QuickBooks sends a reminder when an invoice goes past due. What they usually don’t have is a business automation strategy, meaning a clear idea of what should be automated next, what should stay with a human Virtual Assistant and who is responsible for noticing when something stops working.
The last part is really important. You won’t get an email from an automation saying “Sorry, this didn’t work.” It just stops, and you find out three weeks later when a potential client asks why nobody answered their inquiry.
Start With a Process You Already Run
The most common mistake I see is starting with a tool. Someone hears about Zapier or Make, signs up and starts connecting apps to see what’s possible. A month later they have a dozen “zaps,” often a few that duplicate each other and one that sends new leads a welcome email meant for paying clients.
Start instead with a process you already run by hand. Write down what triggers it, each step someone takes and what “done” looks like. If you can’t describe the process clearly, automating it will only make the confusion happen faster. Our post on why AI won’t fix being the bottleneck makes the same point about AI: tools speed up work that’s already organized, and they multiply the mess when it isn’t.
How to Pick Your First Automations
Some processes make better candidates than others, and the first few you choose will decide whether your team trusts automation or starts working around it. I’d look for three things.
It Happens Often and the Same Way
The best candidates run several times a week and follow the same steps each time. Copying new web form leads into your CRM is a good example. So is sending a confirmation email when someone books a consultation. If a process changes depending on who the client is or what they asked for, keep a person on it for now.
A Mistake Is Cheap to Catch
Start where an error is annoying but not damaging. If an automation tags a lead with the wrong source, someone can fix it in a minute. If an automation sends the wrong contract to a client or refunds the wrong payment, the cost is much higher. Save anything involving money leaving your account, legal documents or sensitive client information for later, and keep a person reviewing it when you get there.
The Steps Are Already Written Down
If you have a checklist or SOP for the process, half the setup work is done. The person building the automation can follow the document step by step, and you’ll have something to compare against when you test it.
Good First Automations for a Small Business
Here are the kinds of automations I’d suggest most small businesses start with, because they’re frequent and low risk:
- Sending new website form submissions into your CRM with the lead source filled in, and creating a follow-up task for whoever handles new inquiries
- Adding booked consultations from Calendly to a shared calendar and sending the prospect an intake form the same day
- Sending automatic payment reminders from QuickBooks or your invoicing tool at 7 and 14 days past due
- Saving email attachments from specific senders, like vendor invoices, into the right Google Drive or Dropbox folder
- Posting a message in Slack or Teams when a client signs a proposal, so the person handling onboarding can start
None of these is exciting, and that’s on purpose. They take minutes of someone’s time several times a week (ten minutes a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year… about 40 hours a year for one small task), and they’re easy to test. If you use HubSpot, our guide to setting up HubSpot CRM with a Virtual Assistant walks through getting the CRM side organized first, which makes the lead automations much easier.
Where a Person Stays in the Loop
AI automation for business works best when you decide in advance where a person reviews the output. AI can draft a reply to a customer inquiry, summarize a call or sort incoming email into folders. Someone still has to read the draft before it goes out, check that the summary matches what was said and pull the urgent email out of the “later” folder.
A simple rule I like: the automation can prepare, and a person approves anything that leaves the building. Internal steps like moving files, creating tasks and updating fields can run automatically. Anything a client, vendor or the public will see gets a human review until you’ve watched it work correctly for a good while. Our post on combining human support and digital tools has more examples of where that line falls in customer service, HR and sales.
Someone Has to Be Responsible for the Automations
This is the step most businesses skip. Automations break when small things happen, like when a password changes, someone renames a form field, an app updates its connection or your Zapier plan hits its monthly task limit. Nobody gets an alert unless someone set one up.
Put a human Virtual Assistant in charge of your automations. Their job is to keep a simple list of what’s running (what triggers it, what it does, which accounts it connects), check the error logs once a week, test the important ones after any software change and turn off the ones nobody uses anymore. For most small businesses that’s an hour or two a month. It doesn’t need to be you, and it usually shouldn’t be. A Virtual Assistant who knows your tools can handle the weekly check and tell you when something needs a bigger fix.
When to Build It Yourself and When to Get Help
If your first automation is a single step, like sending form submissions to a spreadsheet, you can probably set it up yourself in an afternoon. Once automations start depending on each other, touching payments, connecting to your CRM through an API or using AI to make decisions, it’s worth having someone who does this regularly. The time you’d spend learning the tool and fixing your mistakes is time you could spend on clients.
Getting help also gives you something you can’t easily create alone, which is a second set of eyes. The person who built an automation is the worst person to test it, because they already know how it’s supposed to work.
FAQs
What is a business automation strategy?
It’s a plan for which processes you’ll automate, in what order, where a person reviews the output and who keeps the automations working. Without one, most businesses end up with a pile of disconnected automations that nobody fully understands.
Which business processes should I automate first?
Start with processes that happen several times a week, follow the same steps each time and are cheap to fix if something goes wrong. Moving form leads into your CRM, sending booking confirmations and sending invoice reminders are common starting points.
Should a person review AI automation for business?
Yes, especially for anything a client or the public will see. Let AI draft, sort and summarize, and have a person approve emails, proposals and anything involving money before it goes out.
How do I know if an automation stopped working?
Most tools like Zapier and Make keep an error log and can send alerts, but someone has to check them. A weekly review by the person responsible for your automations, plus a test after any software change, catches most problems before a client does.
Can a Virtual Assistant manage business automations?
A Virtual Assistant can keep your list of automations current, check error logs, test workflows and handle simple fixes. For building new integrations or anything that touches an API, a technical specialist is usually the better fit.
Ready to Automate the Right Things?
If you’d like help choosing what to automate, building it properly and keeping it running, our technical and web services team sets up automations and integrations in Zapier, Make, HubSpot and the other tools you already use. We’ll start with the processes that save you the most time and help you decide who keeps an eye on them once they’re running.
