14 Zapier Central use cases and ideas

Get inspired with 14 use cases for Zapier's AI product, Central.

‍Zapier Central is one of the most powerful AI tools I’ve used.

But most people don’t realize what it can do.

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Let’s change that.

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Today, I’ll share 14 Zapier Central use cases so that you can actually start using AI as your personal assistant.

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Time to get inspired.

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Quick intro to Central

Central is Zapier’s newest AI product (released in March of 2024) that serves as your work assistant.

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Here are the basic building blocks for Central:

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Behaviors. Automation + AI at its finest. This is like setting up a Zap, but more intuitive.
Actions. When you chat with your Assistant, decide which actions it can take on demand from among the thousands of apps integrated with Zapier.
Data sources. Query data sources and perform analysis. Limited integrations at this time, but powerful.

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It also can scrape websites and perform Google Searches as part of a behavior you create or simply in conversation.

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Central is internal to you and your team whereas Zapier Chatbots is for your customers. If you’re curious, I made a video explaining the difference between Central and Chatbots.

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Now let’s take a look at all the ways you can create Central Assistants to get work done.

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14 ways to use Zapier Central

Since this post was inspired by questions I received after rebuilding Clay in Zapier, I’ll start with ways Central can enrich leads just like Clay’s Claygent does.

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Use the Google Chrome extension, search for a list of companies on Linkedin, and then tell Central to “Add Companies.” Each of the following use cases are simply spelled out in the behavior I’ve set up for the Assistant to add companies from the LinkedIn search to a Zapier Table.

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Find out if the company is hiring right now
Find company’s recent blog post topic
Find when company last raised money
Find a company’s closest 5 competitors
Find what podcast episode their CEO last appeared on

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Central does the work and adds the information into Zapier Tables like an intern you’d gladly take a 10-minute reference call for. HIRED.

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Let’s keep going. Here are some other Central use cases:

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Content analysis and repurposing. Add every social post, newsletter content, and Youtube video you post into one Zapier Table. Sync the Table, ask Central to run a weekly report and repurpose content for each channel.
Webinar registrant research. New webinar registrants get added to Airtable. Find who worked for a Fortune 100 company, and then draft a quick personalized email.
Tax return autoresponder. Receive questions in email, lookup client data in a Google Sheet, and draft email responses. Shoutout to Blake Oliver for this one.
Zendesk ticket analysis. Sync up Zendesk. Find ticket trends and common questions.
Add a schedule on a website to your calendar. Maybe it’s a conference schedule, an athletic schedule, or anything else. Add it easily to your own calendar. Check out Andrew’s demo here.
Recruit candidates for an open role. Track open roles, learn brand and voice from your content, draft emails, grow your candidate pipeline. Demo here.
Daily meeting report. Scan your Google Calendar, research external attendees, create a consolidated daily report. Demo here.
Customer Success call prep. Find calls in your Google Calendar, sync Hubspot, do quick research on customer, create quick report to prepare for upcoming call.
Task analysis. Log completed tasks in Todoist into Zapier Tables. Sync the table. Every week, ask questions about your performance to find themes, areas to improve, and summarize your work.

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One last use case and wrapping it up

Quite honestly, anytime I’m surfing that grand ol’ wave of the internet I’ll just pop open Central without any behaviors, actions, or setup and just ask it questions about what I’m seeing.

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You can do this when you’re looking at a Google Sheet, drafting up an email in Google Docs, or looking at recent news. It’s free to do this. In fact, the free plan is extremely generous.

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Zapier Central has completely changed how I work.

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To recap:

Central is your internal assistant powered by AI and 7,000 app integrations
Lead enrichment is a major use case, but there are many more. Try using Central instead of Zaps.
The Central Chrome extension is a super handy companion.

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That’s all for this week!

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Happy Building,

Bryce