Why was this project initiated?

• To close the automation gap vs. competitors and meet market expectations in Thai SaaS.
• To introduce a “sticky” feature that boosts agent efficiency and drives renewals.
• To establish a foundation for future marketing and chat automations (e.g. segmented broadcasts, comment capture).

User personas & pain points

Customer service / Business manager

• Role & Responsibilities: Manage chats, team and satisfy customers. Set up the automated process to reduce chat agent workload. Maintain good SLAs for each e-commerce platforms.
• Pain points:
  
  • Needs to meet SLA standards of every marketplace I use, each of which has different requirements
  • No agents want to work outside of business hours
  • Don't want to hire more agents as it will increase company cost and time on training

Chat agent

• Role & Responsibilities: Handle customer inquiries across all integrated channels–providing product information, updating stock, order status, resolving issues, and handling customer's frustrations.
• Pain points:
  
  • Struggles to handle all chats when having high volumn chats like on campaign days
  • Don't want to answer customers outside of business hours. Needs real time off after work.

Success metrics

For client (users)

Customer Experience & Resolution (better SLA metrics)

• Increase in response rate
• Decrease in number of miss chats
• Decrease in response time (time customers waiting for agent to reply)

Efficiency & Cost Savings

• Human agent time and resource saved
• Automated conversation volume

For Zaapi

• Automation feature adoption rate (usage)
• Revenue from subscription of this feature or more users subscribing plans with this feature (prove product-market fit)
• Increase in messages sent in Zaapi (business engagement rate)

Automations

Design process

Research approach

• 5 user exploratory interviews (sellers, agents, managers) for problem discovering problems and defining the scope
• Created empathy maps and journey maps
• Validated user assumptions and automation readiness

Exploratory interview findings

Key insights

Most users want simple automations that cover their essential needs which is key to feature adoption.

With automations, we have found that many users want to keep things simple and are overwhelmed with too many customization. As a result, we will start with very user friendly templates of the most important automations, and open up to those features to more advanced customization in the future. This not only simplifies the experience for the user, it also increases our speed to market by reducing the number of variables/complexity involved in the feature.

Feature Prioritization

Automations

Phase 1: Basic Automation Templates

Feature highlights

• Designed 4 core templates (e.g. auto-assignment, automated message–greeting and out of hours, comment reply, label tagging)
• UI: 1-page form-based setup with live chat preview
• Reduced onboarding friction and launched quickly

Userflows, wireframes & validation

Userflows

Lo-fi sketches

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Hi-fi prototypes

Our rapid usability tests showed the Phase 1 templates met over 80 % of user needs with zero learning curve—users described it as ‘like filling out a form.’ They also exposed pain points around advanced logic and a strong demand for more automation types, directly shaping our Phase 2 visual flow builder.”

Automation list templates

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Automation creation templates

Handover to developers

To ensure a smooth transition from design to development, we prepared comprehensive documentation and resources:

• Feature Purpose: Clarified the "why" behind each feature to align with business goals
• User Personas: Detailed profiles to inform development decisions
• User Flows: Provided step-by-step guides for each automation template
• Design Specifications: Included annotated designs with component behaviors and states
• Prioritization: Outlined scope and prioritization to focus development efforts

Learning and measuring success

After gathering feedback on customer workflows across different company types, we identified that larger companies require more advanced chat workflow customization. This insight led us to move forward with Phase 2 of automation: Custom Flow Builder, which was decided after approximately 6 months of analyzing results and user demand.

Metrics:

• Number of Add-on Subscriptions: Indicates demand for the feature
• Customization Requests: Reflects the need for workflow customization from users
• Company Direction: Aligns with the strategy to attract larger-sized company customers

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Phase 2: Custom Flow Builder

Feature highlights

• Introduced a drag-and-drop flow system for large teams to build complex logic visually
• Modular card-based interaction (e.g., triggers → filters → actions)
• Designed entry points, flow creation UX, and system feedback mechanisms

Design System Elements:

• Automation cards, trigger-action blocks, custom chat previews
• Reusable layout patterns for rule setting, condition blocks, fallback flows

What worked

• Prioritize delivery over discovery. Demand was already proven, so we shipped a minimum lovable product around the highest-volume use cases.
• Serve the majority first, then scale. Quick Start (one-page setup) got non-technical users live in minutes; Flow Builder gave power users full control.

What I’d do differently next time

Design Zaapi’s automation architecture with a seamless migration path: Basic Automations (for non-technical users) should upgrade to Flow Builder (for power users) in one click—no rebuilding, with triggers, conditions, actions, and history preserved. Standardize on Flow Builder as the single interface for creating and editing automations; Basic Automations simply seeds a pre-filled flow inside it.