5 Quick AI Automations You Can Set Up This Afternoon

Here's the truth: you're losing 23 hours a week to busywork. That's what Q1 2026 productivity studies found for the average SMB owner. You don't need to hire a CTO to get that time back.

These aren't futuristic robot fantasies. They're easy business automation workflows you can build today with the tools already in your stack. Whether you run a healthcare clinic, a law firm, or a home services crew, these work out of the box.

No coding. No six-month implementations. Just practical AI handling the work you'd rather ignore.

1. The 5-Minute Lead Response Bot

Leads go cold fast. After five minutes, your odds of conversion drop by 80%. But you're in meetings, driving, or actually doing the work.

Fix it in 20 minutes:

1. Trigger: Set up a Zapier trigger for new Facebook Lead Ads, Typeform submissions, or Calendly bookings.
2. AI Filter: Add an OpenAI step. Prompt it: "Classify this lead as Hot, Warm, or Cold based on budget/timeline mentioned. Reply with just the classification."
3. Route: If "Hot," send a Slack DM to your sales rep and draft a personalized email in Gmail immediately. If "Warm," add to your CRM with a "follow up tomorrow" tag.

2. Inbox-to-CRM Auto-Triage

If your inbox is your task manager, things fall through the cracks.

1. Trigger: New email lands in a shared inbox (sales@ or support@).
2. AI Extract: Use AI to pull name, company, intent, and urgency.
3. Action: Create/update CRM contact, set owner, and add a follow-up task with a due date.

3. Smart Review Request Follow-Up

Most happy customers will leave a review, but only if you ask at the right moment.

1. Trigger: Job marked complete in your field app or payment marked paid.
2. Delay: Wait 2 hours so the result is fresh.
3. Action: Send SMS/email with a direct review link. If no response in 48 hours, send one polite reminder.

4. Meeting Notes -> Action Items

Meetings create decisions, but action items get lost.

1. Trigger: New Zoom/Meet transcript.
2. AI Summarize: Convert transcript into decisions, owners, and deadlines.
3. Action: Push tasks to Asana/ClickUp and post summary in Slack.

5. Daily KPI Digest in Slack

Stop logging into five dashboards before 9 AM.

1. Trigger: Every weekday at 8:00 AM.
2. Collect: Pull key numbers from Stripe, HubSpot, and your CRM.
3. AI Explain: Generate a short "what changed and why it matters" summary.
4. Action: Post one concise dashboard update to leadership Slack.

Start with one, not all five

The mistake most teams make is trying to automate everything at once. Pick the workflow that hurts the most, ship it today, then stack the next one tomorrow.