5 AI automations that pay for themselves within a month

Skip the flashy demos. These automations save real hours from week one: 1. Instant lead follow-up — A new form lead gets a personalised WhatsApp or email reply in under a minute, and is logged in your CRM with its source. 2. Call and meeting summaries — Recordings become a short summary, action items and CRM notes automatically. 3. Weekly reporting — Ad, analytics and sales data pulled into one summary with the three things that changed most. 4. Support triage — Incoming messages tagged by topic and urgency, with a drafted reply for a human to approve. 5. Content repurposing — One long article turned into social posts, an email and FAQs, ready for review. How to start: pick the task your team repeats most, write down every step, then automate the boring 80% and keep a human on the final 20%. Tools like n8n, Make or Zapier plus an LLM API are enough for all five.