Connor Sheffield didn’t start out in tech. In fact, when he first joined Zonos—a SaaS company that offers technology to simplify the complexities of international commerce—he’d never worked a desk job, didn’t know what an API was, and had zero automation experience. What he did have was a willingness to learn and an eye for efficiency.
“My first task wasn’t managing an inbox or scheduling meetings,” Connor said. “It was managing Zaps. Fifteen or so were already running for our Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), and my job was to make sure they didn’t fail.”
That unexpected first assignment kicked off a journey that transformed Connor’s career from Executive Assistant to Head of Marketing Operations and Automation—and helped Zonos scale operational impact across its teams.
“Technology is meant to make our lives easier, and Zapier does that 10x,” said Connor.
Zonos’s results, by the numbers:
-
50% reduction in customer onboarding time
-
Hundreds of hours saved via internal automations like Inbox Broom
-
15+ employees across departments actively building Zaps
-
Improved employee retention and promotions through automation-driven growth
Empowering EAs to do more than manage email
Many Executive Assistants are seen as behind-the-scenes operators, masters of calendars and communications. But Connor’s story shows what’s possible when an EA is empowered with automation.
When he joined Zonos in 2021, Connor inherited a small Zapier ecosystem and began by simply learning how Zaps worked. He spent time comparing failed runs to successful ones to understand logic and structure. What started as basic troubleshooting soon led to building out new automations across marketing, finance, sales, and onboarding.
And as Connor’s automation skills grew, so did his impact.
“When I started stringing multiple Zaps together into end-to-end systems, I saw the bigger picture. I wasn’t just helping myself—I was helping the entire company scale. That shift in mindset was the turning point for me,” said Connor.
Within a year, he transitioned into a Business Systems Analyst role. One year later, he became Head of Business Automation—and now leads marketing operations as well.
Turning onboarding friction into a seamless customer experience
International tax compliance isn’t simple. Zonos customers often integrate with carriers like FedEx and UPS, connect APIs, and configure country-specific tax logic. That made customer onboarding a high-friction handoff from sales to implementation.
That was until Connor built a new system to speed up the time to value for Zonos’ customers. Here’s how it works:
-
Sales opportunity closes closes in Salesforce.
-
Data is cleaned, formatted, and synced with Zonos’s backend to create a dashboard account and kick off onboarding.
-
An onboarding project is also created that both the customer and onboarding rep have access to view integrations tasks and progress.
-
Another Zap books meetings, connects carriers, and alerts the onboarding team.
“We cut onboarding time in half. Sales and onboarding were constantly misaligned before. Now, we let automation do the communication for us,” said Connor.
Building an AI-powered inbox assistant to save time
From his time as an Executive Assistant, Connor learned how much time was spent triaging email inboxes. After moving into his new role, he realized just how much time was being spent across the multiple Executive Assistants at the company doing this manual work. It wasn’t sustainable.
So he supported one of the EA’s at Zonos to build a tool to help do the work for them, and they named it the “Inbox Broom.” Here’s how it automatically keeps any inbox cleaned up:
-
A new email is received in Gmail.
-
The email is sent to ChatGPT, which classifies the email by topic and urgency.
-
Emails are automatically tagged using the classification and routed to priority folders in their inbox.
“Inbox Broom saves our execs and EAs so much time. When they log in, their inbox is already prioritized,” said Connor.
Per executive team member, Zonos is saving 3-5 hours per week with the Inbox Broom, which they’ve shifted to other responsibilities.
Scaling automation across the company
After seeing the impact of Zapier firsthand, Connor didn’t stop at building workflows himself. He turned his attention to scaling that ability across the company. He invited more team members to learn Zapier, like sales reps and non-technical staff.
Instead of starting with two-step Zaps, he challenged them to build four-step workflows that involved formatting or data enrichment.
“I always start by asking, ‘What sucks about your job?’ We document the pain, build something together, and suddenly they’re automators. They’ve caught the bug.”
Zonos now has 20+ employees using Zapier regularly to solve problems in real time, without engineering bottlenecks.
Automation is a path to elevation—not replacement
Connor makes it clear: automation hasn’t eliminated jobs at Zonos, it’s actually created opportunity. Zonos employees who have been able to automate large parts of their role, have gone on to take on new projects or roles that allow them to increase their impact and job satisfaction—just like it did for him.
“Automation isn’t about replacing humans. It’s about elevating them to do what only humans can do,” said Connor.
That mindset helped him go from EA to operational leader in under three years. And he’s using that same philosophy to empower every team at Zonos to think like an automator.
About Zonos
-
Company size: 100+ employees
-
Industry: SaaS
-
Location: St. George, Utah
