How AI Agencies Can Win Big with Zapier Central in 2024

Zapier Central is Zapier's new AI workspace where customers can build, teach, and work with AI Bots. It is a public preview that represents the next evolution in evolving automation for the AI age.

Key features of Zapier Central:

• AI Bots that can be customized with business data to handle tasks across 6,000 apps, accelerating business processes.
• Access to dynamic data sources like Notion, Google Sheets, Airtable, and more, allowing workflows to be built off data stored in these documents and databases.
• Puts customers in the driver's seat to automate even more work with their friendly AI Bots.
• Combines the synchronous use case of chatting with information/data/knowledge sources, and the asynchronous use case of automating processes that run on a schedule.
• Aims to enable complex workflows and get users up to speed building workflows much faster than before.

Zapier is focused on continuously improving Zapier Central, with upcoming enhancements in areas like speed, UX improvements, and integrations with more data sources. As a public preview, Zapier is building in the open and welcomes feedback from the community, especially agencies, to help shape the roadmap.

Zapier Central is the next evolution in automation, combining the power of AI-driven conversational agents with the flexibility of scheduled backend tasks. This hybrid approach allows customers to seamlessly switch between synchronous and asynchronous workflows, empowering them to automate a wide range of business processes.

The synchronous use case enables users to chat with their data, knowledge sources, and AI-powered bots, allowing for real-time information retrieval and decision-making. This conversational interface makes it easier to explore and understand the data, leading to more informed actions.

The asynchronous workflows, on the other hand, handle the scheduled tasks that don't necessarily require direct user input. These automated processes can run at various intervals, from once a day to once a week, without the need for constant user interaction. This allows businesses to streamline repetitive tasks and free up time for more strategic initiatives.

By bringing these two aspects together, Zapier Central provides a comprehensive automation platform that caters to the diverse needs of businesses. Users can leverage the conversational capabilities to quickly access and manipulate data, while the scheduled workflows ensure that routine tasks are executed efficiently in the background.

This hybrid approach is a significant step forward in the automation landscape, as it addresses the limitations of traditional chatbots and scheduled task managers. Zapier's focus on integrating dynamic data sources, such as Google Sheets, Notion, and Airtable, further enhances the platform's capabilities, allowing users to build workflows that adapt to changing business needs.

As Zapier continues to innovate and ship improvements on a regular basis, the potential for agencies and businesses to leverage Zapier Central for their automation needs is vast. The platform's open and collaborative approach, inviting feedback from the community, ensures that the product evolves to meet the evolving demands of the market.

Zapier Central's integration with dynamic data sources like Google Sheets, Notion, and Airtable is a key advantage that sets it apart from other automation platforms. This feature allows users to build workflows and chatbots that can access and interact with constantly updated data, making the automation much more powerful and relevant.

For example, a sales team can connect their Central bot to a Google Sheet tracking competitor information. As the sales manager updates this sheet, the bot can automatically pull the latest data and use it to provide the sales rep with up-to-date competitive insights during a customer call. This dynamic data integration eliminates the need for manual data entry and ensures the automation is always working with the most current information.

Similarly, Central users can connect to databases, CRMs, and other business systems to build workflows that automatically trigger based on changes to the underlying data. This level of flexibility and real-time responsiveness is a significant improvement over traditional automation tools that rely on static data sources.

Overall, Zapier's focus on dynamic data integration is a strategic move that positions Central as a powerful platform for building intelligent, adaptive automation solutions. This capability is a key differentiator that agencies and developers should leverage when creating AI-powered workflows and chatbots for their clients.

Zapier Central presents a vast playground for AI agencies to innovate and offer specialized AI solutions. As a public preview product, Zapier is focused on gathering feedback and continuously improving the platform.

Agencies are encouraged to get involved, implement Central with customers, and provide feedback to help shape the roadmap. Zapier sees a significant opportunity for agencies to leverage Central and deliver value to their clients. The platform's dynamic data integration, ability to build workflows off processes stored in documents/databases, and the combination of conversational AI and automated backend tasks create a unique offering.

Agencies can take advantage of Central's capabilities to build and sell AI-powered solutions faster than traditional custom-coded approaches. Zapier is committed to shipping improvements and new features on a regular basis, so agencies should stay engaged and provide input to influence the product's evolution.

The pricing model for Central is expected to be usage-based, aligning with the industry trends in AI tooling. Zapier aims to ensure the pricing structure helps agencies and customers drive value from the platform.

While deployment options outside of the Central interface are still in development, Zapier recommends exploring their existing Chatbots product for embedding AI-powered experiences on websites and other platforms. Compliance and data governance features are also planned for the future, as Zapier continues to build trust and transparency with its user community.

Overall, Zapier Central represents a significant opportunity for AI-focused agencies to innovate, differentiate their offerings, and collaborate with Zapier to shape the future of AI-powered automation.

Zapier's Director of AI, Andy Burman, provided some insights on the pricing and deployment plans for Zapier Central:

• Pricing for Zapier Central will likely be usage-based, similar to other AI tools in the market. Burman stated that "in everything that we've seen in every tool that we've seen in AI, it is usage based."

• The exact pricing model is still to be determined, but Burman promised it will be designed to help customers and agencies drive value from the platform. He said, "I promise you it'll it'll be helping our customers and our agencies Drive value for their customers."

• Regarding deployment options beyond the Zapier Central platform, Burman mentioned that Zapier has another product called Chatbots that would be suitable for embedding AI bots on websites.

• For integrating the Zapier Central bots with other internal tools, Burman indicated that this functionality is likely to come in the future, but the current focus is on gathering feedback from users during the public preview phase.

• On the topic of compliance and data privacy, Burman acknowledged that these are important considerations, especially for agencies selling solutions to customers. He stated that Zapier will be building towards addressing these requirements in the future, but the current public preview version does not yet have all the necessary compliance features in place.

Overall, Burman emphasized that Zapier is focused on gathering feedback from the community during the public preview phase of Zapier Central, with the goal of continuously innovating and improving the product to meet the needs of both customers and agencies.

Zapier is committed to maintaining the trust of its customers when it comes to data privacy and compliance. While Zapier Central is currently in public preview, the company acknowledges that future versions will need to address these important considerations.

Some key points:

• Zapier is one of the most trusted brands in the automation space and customers can expect the same level of compliance and data privacy measures to be implemented in Zapier Central.

• However, as an early-stage product, Zapier Central is currently not training on user data. The company is being transparent about the current capabilities on the landing page and FAQ.

• Moving forward, Zapier will be building towards full compliance and data privacy features for Zapier Central. This includes addressing concerns around GDPR, data handling, and other regulatory requirements.

• Agencies and customers can expect Zapier to prioritize these compliance and privacy aspects as the product matures, in line with Zapier's reputation for trust and security.

• In the meantime, Zapier encourages feedback from the community to help shape the roadmap and ensure Zapier Central meets the necessary compliance standards for enterprise use.

I am an optimist when it comes to the future of AI and automation. I believe there is an incredible opportunity for businesses and our customer base to really adopt automation and AI. AI makes it much easier to adopt complicated workflows that would have previously taken a lot of time and effort to set up.

For example, a customer was able to set up a 40-step zap with multiple model calls to automate a lead funnel in significantly less time than the 20 hours it would have taken without AI. This is a win for everyone - the customer can get their automation up and running faster, and we can continue shipping cutting-edge AI-based automation solutions across our core editor, classic editor, chatbots, Central, Canvas, and other products.

We are constantly iterating and pushing out new products to enable our customers and community to take advantage of the latest advancements in the AI ecosystem. While we are still learning and improving, products like Canvas can provide valuable insights into how complex systems can work by allowing you to diagram and visualize the flow of data and automation.

The opportunity for specialized AI agencies that can leverage Zapier's ecosystem is very real. We are shipping improvements rapidly, so I would encourage agencies to get involved, implement Central with customers, and provide feedback to help shape our roadmap. This is a public preview, so we are building in collaboration with the community, which is a first for us.

Overall, I'm very excited about the future of AI automation and the role Zapier can play in empowering businesses to adopt these powerful capabilities. The potential is vast, and I look forward to continuing to innovate and work closely with our agency partners and customers.

Zapier Central is a new AI workspace that allows customers to build, teach, and work with AI bots. While Central is a powerful standalone product, Zapier sees it as part of a broader ecosystem of automation tools.

One key integration is with Zapier's Canvas product. Canvas is a diagramming and system design tool that helps users visualize their automation workflows.

According to Andy, the integration between Central and Canvas is intended to provide a more comprehensive view of an AI-powered automation system. Users can diagram the overall workflow in Canvas, highlighting the different steps and how they connect. They can then integrate the various components, such as tables, interfaces, chatbots, and the classic Zapier editor, into this visual representation.

The goal is to give users and their teams a clear understanding of how the different parts of the automation system fit together. This can be especially helpful when working on complex, multi-step processes that leverage AI capabilities from Central.

While the integration between Central and Canvas is still evolving, Andy sees it as a natural extension of Zapier's automation ecosystem. By providing both the AI-powered functionality of Central and the diagramming and system design capabilities of Canvas, Zapier aims to give agencies and businesses a comprehensive set of tools to build and manage their AI-driven automation solutions.