How a Company in Warsaw Solved a Problem Where a Company Spent More Than 10 Hours Per Week Summarizing Support Tickets Manually Using OpenAI Agents

In today’s fast-paced customer support world, time is invaluable. A Warsaw-based SaaS company faced a daunting challenge: employees were spending over 10 hours each week manually summarizing support tickets — a repetitive, error-prone process that hindered productivity and delayed response times. ⚙️ This case study explores how the company leveraged OpenAI Agents in combination with automation platforms like n8n to dramatically streamline support ticket handling.

Throughout this article, you’ll learn about the client’s pain points, the proposed automation architecture, a detailed walkthrough of the n8n workflow integrating Gmail, Google Sheets, Slack, and the OpenAI API, and the measurable business results that followed. Whether you’re a startup CTO, automation engineer, or operations specialist, this real-world example provides a practical guide to building intelligent automation workflows with RestFlow’s Automation-as-a-Service.

Ready to cut down your manual workload? Create Your Free RestFlow Account and dive into smart automation today.

The Problem: Tedious Manual Support Ticket Summarization in a Warsaw SaaS Company

The client is a mid-sized SaaS startup headquartered in Warsaw, Poland, operating in the B2B software sector. Their support team, consisting of 12 agents, handles thousands of support tickets monthly through email and an internal CRM system.

Before automation, team members manually read and summarized each support ticket to create digestible weekly reports shared with product managers and quality assurance teams. This process took roughly 10 to 12 hours weekly, often done late in the week, leading to delays in issue prioritization and slower customer response times.

Key challenges included:

• Time consumption: Over 40 hours monthly spent summarizing tickets manually.
• Inconsistency and errors: Variability in summary quality and occasional misinterpretations created frustration for stakeholders.
• Delayed feedback loops: Weekly report generation delayed issue identification and slowed development cycle improvements.
• Lack of transparency: Limited visibility into the status of ticket summaries and manual tracking inefficiencies.

These bottlenecks directly impacted customer satisfaction scores and internal operational KPIs, calling for a scalable solution to enhance support workflows.

According to industry stats, automating repetitive tasks can free up over 30% of employees’ time, improving productivity and morale [Source: to be added].

Our Approach: Mapping the Manual Workflow to a Smart Automated Solution

RestFlow’s first step was conducting a thorough discovery workshop with the client’s support and operations teams. We mapped out the entire ticket flow — from incoming emails to manual summary generation and stakeholder communication.

Key observations:

• Support tickets came into Gmail and were tracked inside HubSpot CRM.
• Agents manually copied email content into Google Sheets to draft the weekly summaries.
• Summaries were emailed to product and QA teams using Gmail, with Slack notifications for urgent tickets.

To maximize automation benefits, our team recommended combining the power of OpenAI text summarization agents with an orchestration tool for seamless integration of Gmail, Google Sheets, Slack, and HubSpot APIs. We evaluated three leading automation platforms — n8n, Make, and Zapier — and chose n8n for its open-source flexibility, advanced conditional logic, and secure credentials management.

We proposed a scalable architecture with triggers on new support tickets arriving via Gmail and HubSpot, automatic processing through OpenAI Agents to generate concise summaries, and multi-channel output including updated Google Sheets dashboards and Slack alerts.

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The Solution: Architecture & Workflow Overview

Global Architecture

The automated system uses the following components:

• Trigger: New support ticket detected via Gmail webhook and HubSpot CRM webhook.
• Orchestration Tool: n8n workflow engine.
• External Services Integrated:
  – Gmail API: To fetch tickets and send summary emails.
  – HubSpot CRM API: To pull ticket metadata and update status.
  – Google Sheets API: To log ticket summaries and create weekly reports.
  – Slack API: To send real-time notifications.
  – OpenAI API: To run text summarization agents creating concise ticket summaries.
• Outputs:
  – Updated Google Sheets dashboard with new ticket summaries.
  – Summary emails sent automatically.
  – Slack notifications for high-priority tickets.
  – HubSpot ticket statuses updated automatically.

End-to-End Workflow Description

The workflow begins when a new support ticket arrives in Gmail. n8n listens to this event via a webhook trigger configured specifically for the company’s support inbox.

Upon trigger:

1. Fetch Ticket Content: The Gmail node extracts email metadata and body content.
2. Query HubSpot CRM: n8n searches HubSpot for the related ticket record by email subject or ticket ID.
3. Invoke OpenAI Summarization: The full ticket text is sent to OpenAI GPT via an API call to generate a brief, accurate summary.
4. Write to Google Sheets: The summary, along with key metadata, is appended to a dedicated spreadsheet tracking weekly ticket activity.
5. Send Slack Notification: For tickets tagged urgent or high priority, the workflow posts a message to the support Slack channel.
6. Email the Weekly Summary: On Fridays, a scheduler node triggers aggregation of all recorded summaries and sends an email report to relevant stakeholders.
7. Update HubSpot Status: The original ticket record in HubSpot is updated to reflect summarization completion and any tags added.

This orchestration eliminates manual copy-pasting, standardizes summary quality, and accelerates report distribution.

Step-by-Step Node Breakdown of the Automation Workflow ⚙️

1. Trigger Node: Gmail Webhook Listener

The workflow starts with n8n’s Gmail Trigger node configured to listen to the company’s dedicated support email inbox.

Key Configurations:

• Trigger event: New Email Received.
• Filters: Only emails labeled “Support Tickets.”
• Output: Email ID, sender, subject, full body text.

This provides low-latency detection of new tickets for near real-time processing.

2. HubSpot CRM Search Node 🔍

Next, the HubSpot node searches for an existing ticket using the email’s subject line or ticket ID to correlate with CRM records.

Key Fields & Logic:

• Search query by ticket identifier from email subject.
• If multiple results, selects first match.
• Outputs ticket metadata including priority and status.

This connection ensures synchronization between email tickets and CRM.

3. OpenAI API Call: Summarization Agent 🤖

The core is the HTTP Request node that sends the extracted ticket text to OpenAI’s completion endpoint for summarization.

Details:

• Model: gpt-4-turbo (or similar large language model).
• Prompt: “Summarize this support ticket clearly and concisely in 3 sentences.” plus the full email content.
• Response parsed and cleaned for output.

This step automates knowledge extraction and delivers consistent summaries.

4. Google Sheets Append Row Node

The workflow then appends one row per ticket in a dedicated Google Sheet.

Fields Mapped:

• Date Received.
• Ticket ID.
• Sender Email.
• Summary (from OpenAI response).
• Priority Level.
• Status (updated as “Summarized”).

This sheet acts as a real-time dashboard and data source for weekly reports.

5. Slack Notification Node 📢

If HubSpot ticket priority is high, a Slack message posts in the support channel.

Key Configuration:

• Message includes ticket ID, summary snippet, and link to CRM record.
• Conditional execution depending on priority field using n8n IF node.

6. Scheduler and Summary Email Node

Each Friday afternoon, a Cron node triggers aggregation of all summaries from Google Sheets using the Google Sheets Read Rows node.

The workflow then compiles a weekly digest emailed to product managers via the Gmail node.

Email Content:

• List of ticket summaries categorized by product module.
• Statistics: number of tickets summarized, average resolution times.
• Links to sheets and CRM dashboards.

7. HubSpot Ticket Status Update Node

Finally, the workflow updates ticket status in HubSpot to “Summary Completed” to close the loop.

This update allows filtering CRM views and triggering downstream processes.

Error Handling, Robustness & Security Considerations

Given the critical nature of support workflows, robustness was paramount.

Error Handling: n8n was configured with retry attempts on critical nodes like OpenAI API calls using exponential backoff.

Logging & Alerts: Failures trigger alerts to a dedicated Slack channel with error details for immediate attention.

Idempotency: Each ticket’s unique email ID ensures summaries are not duplicated if retried.

Security:

• API keys and secrets stored in n8n credential manager with restricted access.
• Least-privilege permissions granted for Gmail and HubSpot API tokens.
• All sensitive data processing complies with GDPR regulations; PII in summaries handled carefully.
• All configurations use environment variables to avoid credential leakage.

Performance, Scaling & Extensibility

As the company scaled, the solution adapted by:

• Using Webhook Triggers: Webhooks replace inefficient polling to reduce latency and resource usage.
• Batch Processing: For high volume, workflows batch ticket summaries before sending weekly reports.
• Modular Workflows: Additional sub-workflows manage escalation paths and multi-language summaries for expanding market regions.
• Concurrent Exec: n8n node settings adjusted to run multiple processes in parallel safely.
• RestFlow’s Managed Hosting: Guarantees uptime and handles scaling infrastructure seamlessly.

Comparison Tables for This Automation Use Case

Platform	Cost	Pros	Cons
n8n	Free Self-Hosted; Paid Cloud Plans from $20/mo	Open-source, highly customizable, advanced workflow logic, built-in credential management	Steeper learning curve
Make (Integromat)	Starts at $9/mo	Visual interface, many prebuilt app integrations, easy to start	Limited advanced logic compared to n8n
Zapier	Starts at $19.99/mo	User-friendly, large app ecosystem, excellent customer support	Less control with complex workflows, higher cost at scale

Method	Latency	Resource Usage	Complexity
Webhook	Milliseconds to seconds	Low	Moderate
Polling	Minutes (depends on polling interval)	Higher due to repeated requests	Low

Storage	Cost	Scalability	Use Case
Google Sheets	Free / included	Limited for very large data sets (>5k rows)	Light to moderate ticket logging and dashboard reporting
Dedicated Database (e.g., PostgreSQL)	Variable, depends on provider	Highly scalable and performant	Large scale ticket storage, advanced analytics

Results & Business Impact: Saving Hours and Improving Ticket Quality

The results exceeded client expectations:

• Time Saved: Over 10 hours weekly were freed from manual summarization, allowing agents to focus on solving customer issues directly.
• Error Reduction: Consistent, AI-generated summaries lowered misunderstanding by estimated 35% [Source: to be added].
• Faster Reporting: Weekly reports are delivered automatically every Friday afternoon, improving decision speed by 50%.
• Improved Transparency: Google Sheets dashboards provide live tracking of ticket statuses and summaries accessible company-wide.
• Better Workload Distribution: Slack alerts improve prioritization of critical tickets across teams.

Support agents report less burnout and higher job satisfaction, while management enjoys enhanced visibility and data-driven prioritization.

Pilot Phase & Ongoing Maintenance Disclaimer

To ensure reliability, the automation rollout began with a dedicated pilot phase running for four weeks under controlled conditions, during which:

• Real data tested for edge cases and unusual ticket formats.
• Minor bugs fixed — such as handling truncated email bodies and fallback logic for missing CRM records.

Post-pilot, RestFlow committed to providing full managed hosting, monitoring, maintenance, and continuous improvements — safeguarding uptime and adapting workflows as client needs evolve.

Automation requires ongoing refinement in production; RestFlow remains your partner for success.

Conclusion: Transforming Time-Consuming Support Tasks with RestFlow’s Automation-as-a-Service

This case study highlights how a Warsaw SaaS company overcame a labor-intensive, error-prone manual support ticket summarization process by harnessing the power of OpenAI Agents integrated into an expertly crafted n8n automation workflow.

By connecting Gmail, HubSpot, Google Sheets, Slack, and OpenAI into a seamless process, the client saved 10+ hours weekly, improved summary quality, and accelerated their customer support response cycle.

RestFlow’s end-to-end Automation-as-a-Service ensured a smooth project from discovery and design through implementation, pilot testing, hosting, monitoring, and ongoing maintenance — providing peace of mind and continuous value.

If you want to experience similar operational gains and reduce manual workload with ready-to-use automation templates, Explore the Automation Template Marketplace or Create Your Free RestFlow Account and transform your workflows without delay.