9 Best AI Automation Tools to Automate Tasks and Streamline Workflows

Between meetings, deadlines, reports, and actual work, it can seem like there’s  never enough time in a work day. The constant juggling of responsibilities and the pressure to deliver results can lead to burnout and decreased productivity. This is where the transformative power of automation and AI tools comes into play. These innovative tools can perform tasks in seconds that used to take hours or days, freeing you up for more creative, high-value work.

Let’s look at some of the best AI automation tools in the market and how they’re revolutionizing business efficiency. 

How AI automation tools transform the workplace

Manual tasks, such as data entry, analysis, and other administrative work, can consume a lot of time for teams. AI automation tools can support humans by taking many of these tasks off their plates and increasing overall productivity. Here are a few examples:

• Customer service chatbots. When trained on organizational data, AI-powered chatbots can work 24/7 to help customers get the information they need, such as providing technical support or screening customer inquiries before connecting them with a human representative.
• Data collection and reporting. AI tools can collect and organize customer data automatically and generate reports based on that information. The ability to instantly access key data, such as a sudden increase in support requests after the release of a new product or service, can equip your organization to respond to situations more quickly.
• Predictive analytics. AI tools can automate predictive analytics, helping teams identify trends, forecast future sales, and detect risks. Access to real-time analytics dashboards informs and prepares teams to make better decisions.
• Project management. Within project management platforms and work operating systems like Slack, AI tools help teams streamline workflows, prioritize tasks, summarize meeting notes, data, and documents, and even provide action item recommendations and assistance drafting correspondence to improve productivity and keep projects moving forward.

 

9 best AI automation tools for productivity

There are many potential use cases for AI automation tools with options available to serve different needs and business goals. Before you decide on a tool or combination of tools to implement across your company, review your data, speak with your team, gather customer feedback, and outline your goals. This will help you identify the best AI automation tools for your specific needs. Below is a list of some of the top tools available based on user reviews, each with its own key features, capabilities, and benefits.

We curated the following list from reviews on platforms such as G2, Capterra, Gartner, and TrustRadius. We only included tools with a minimum 4 of 5 (or equivalent) ratings. To come up with the scores, these platforms collect reviews from verified customers and offer detailed, balanced feedback that highlights the pros and cons of each tool.

1. Agentforce in Slack

Slack organizes and unifies data in a single workspace, connecting teams with the people and tools they use every day. Its newest integration, Agentforce, is an AI system that can understand and respond to inquiries without human intervention. Slack users can build custom AI agents that function autonomously within Slack, helping with tasks such as generating marketing content, supporting employee onboarding, and surfacing historical knowledge to solve customer issues.

Teams can communicate with agents and assign them tasks directly in Slack, just as they would a human co-worker, making them collaborative virtual teammates that help increase productivity. Powered by relevant conversations in Slack and trusted enterprise data, Agentforce can suggest and take action right in the flow of work.

2. Salesforce Einstein GPT

A recent addition to their CRM suite, Salesforce Einstein GPT is a conversational generative AI tool that allows users to interact with their organization’s proprietary data in a conversational way. Einstein GPT can generate tailored content based on data — and continuously update reports and other content as the data evolves.

This tool can integrate with other public and private AI models, and because it’s continuously trained on real-time data, it has the potential to automate CRM tasks and save sales teams time — from analyzing data and generating reports to creating customized email messages.

3. Trello

Trello is a project management software tool that allows users to create a visual set of lists, or boards, to organize project tasks. Trello includes AI tools, such as the AI-Powered Analyst, which examines existing Trello boards for trends and insights that can help teams with workflow management.

Trello’s AI Report Generator lets users type in a prompt and immediately creates a report based on the board they’re viewing, helping teams get the information they need for efficient decision-making. The premium version also has a built-in AI writing assistant and AI-powered organizational tools.

4. Zapier

Zapier is a popular workflow automation tool that connects with more than 7,000 apps. Users say it’s easy to use, and its versatility allows them to automate workflows involving multiple software tools — including Salesforce, Slack, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and many more — in one place.

Zapier includes integrated AI tools to help users build new workflows (called Zaps), identify trends in data, and summarize meeting transcripts. It also connects to external AI apps, such as Jasper and OpenAI, allowing teams to automate content creation such as email campaigns and blog post drafts.

5. Asana

Asana is a project management platform that helps teams plan and organize complex projects and tasks, from marketing campaigns to product development. Asana has integrated AI tools such as its AI Studio, where users can design generative AI-based agents with a no-code builder and deploy them within a workflow. Asana AI also allows users to automate multiple stages of a workflow, from intake to reporting, drafting content, and keeping projects moving forward.

6. HubSpot

HubSpot is a full CRM platform, serving sales, marketing, content management, customer service, and more. It now includes several AI features to help users automate marketing tasks. Breeze, a set of AI tools for customer-facing teams, uses generative AI to assist teams with social media post and podcast creation, drafting and sending prospective emails, and implementing customer agent chatbots that respond to website visitors. Users can also call on HubSpot’s AI tools to analyze sales and customer data, discern buyer intent, and build optimized forms.

7. Google Cloud AI

Google Cloud’s AI Hub gives users access to plug-and-play AI tools, which they can use to build AI models, integrate with other software, and share what they’ve created. With Google’s generative AI capabilities, teams can create a range of agents and applications that are trained on their organization’s data. They can then interact with those agents to accomplish various tasks such as extracting insights from lengthy documents, building custom machine learning models, and conducting data analysis.

8. Intuit Mailchimp

Mailchimp‘s email marketing platform has been around for more than two decades and now includes several AI marketing tools to help users automate processes. Integrated with Mailchimp, Intuit Assist allows marketing teams to design and draft emails, manage customer mailing lists, and target specific customers with personalized content. The platform also includes AI-powered predictions, helping users pinpoint the best times to send emails, and automated A/B testing with response monitoring to analyze different versions of email content quickly.

9. Adobe Sensei

Adobe Sensei is an AI and machine learning platform designed to automate tasks and improve user experiences within the Adobe product suite. Sensei’s marketing tools include generative AI content creation and management, automated performance marketing analysis, an AI assistant that lets users query enterprise data for insights and guidance, and automated campaign planning and report generation.

Strategies for successful AI adoption

While workers across industries are excited at the prospect of outsourcing tedious work to AI, many also have concerns about automating tasks they’ve always performed manually. A Salesforce survey found that 42% of workers are worried that AI will replace them. And Harvard Business Review identified 12 common concerns about AI risks, including disinformation, safety, security, and ethical concerns.

Navigating these challenges can be intimidating, but it starts with identifying the right tools and training your teams on how to use them. As you’re considering which AI automation tools are right for your organization, here are a few strategies for successful implementation:

• Identify the tasks you want to automate. Start by exploring your current processes and identifying workflows that could be automated. Talk to your team members to find out which routine tasks eat up most of their time and implement AI tools that can handle or support those activities.
• Consider integration. Look at the software tools your teams already rely on and choose AI tools that integrate seamlessly with them. For example, Salesforce users who connect Slack AI and Workflow Builder can enhance and speed up certain processes within the tools where they already work.
• Get team buy-in. To feel good about the product you choose, you and your team must understand AI best practices. This will help you ease employee and customer concerns about privacy and security, reliability, and compliance. Encourage experimentation and knowledge sharing with the tools you adopt. Consider setting up AI adoption groups that include workers from different departments who can regularly share knowledge and insights in company-wide channels.
• Set up clear guidelines for AI use. Establishing guardrails for AI use can give teams the confidence they need to try new tools. According to recent Slack research, desk workers at companies that issue guidelines for AI use are nearly six times more likely to experiment with AI tools than those at companies that offer no guidance. Be sure to set up your teams for success before widespread AI implementation.

 

Bring AI automation tools into your work OS

As AI use in the workplace continues to grow, AI-powered automation tools can support your teams, giving them more time to focus on complex tasks like relationship-building or problem-solving and helping alleviate burnout. Slack AI brings AI automation tools directly into your workspace, helping your employees organize and surface data, accelerate processes, make smarter and faster decisions, and increase customer satisfaction — all from one place.