Welcome to Change Makers, our series highlighting customer stories and builders making an incredible impact with Airtable.
Shelyn Liu oversees product and revenue operations at Gradual, a unified community experience platform. “I heard about Airtable from product-ops peers and tried it when we needed to quickly connect Deals, Contacts and Requests,” she said. Airtable ended up becoming their perfect solution to build streamlined workflows that power their product marketing and revenue operations strategy.
“We shipped a working base in a day and never looked back. It became our single source of truth we could grow without re-platforming.”
And with Airtable AI, they built a single source of truth for both prospects and customer data, helping her team cut down on the tool-hopping they used to do.
Meet Shelyn
What's your go-to productivity hack or ritual?
I generate a one-page "demo brief" in Airtable using AI fields that compile a lead's website, LinkedIn, and notes—so I walk into every call prepped and calm.
What's your superpower at work?
Connecting messy systems (CRM, community, events) into one clean workflow that people actually use.
What's the most surprising use case you've seen (or built) in Airtable?
An AI-assisted "Demo Prep + Signal Router." Status-based automations pull a lead's website/LinkedIn, summarize it, check contact completeness, and—after calls—classify transcript insights (e.g., feature requests, blockers) straight into our product roadmap. It replaced scattered spreadsheets/scripts, cut prep from hours to minutes, reduced errors, and sped up follow-ups.
What advice would you give to someone just getting started with Airtable?
A: Start with one reliable source-of-truth table and a single automation that saves ~30 minutes a week (e.g., record-change → Slack digest). Then layer in AI fields for summarization and classification. Keep steps and notifications inside Airtable to avoid tool-hopping and data drift.
The Challenge & Airtable Solution
Before implementing Airtable, Shelyn's team struggled with inconsistent pre-call preparation that slowed first impressions with potential clients. Customer insights from call transcripts weren't making it into their product roadmap, and contact data was often duplicated or incomplete. These inefficiencies were hampering Gradual's ability to scale their sales operations effectively.
Shelyn built a comprehensive solution leveraging Airtable's native capabilities. “We did consider other options,” she said, “But Airtable was the only thing that gave us database integrity and no-code speed in one place.
Her new system uses AI fields and automations with status-based triggers to create lead briefs and weekly reports. When a deal status changes to "Pending First Demo," automations immediately begin collecting website and LinkedIn information through AI search, compiling it back into Airtable fields. The system also uses Omni AI Chat to extract and classify feature requests from call transcripts, feeding them directly into the roadmap tables.
"We prioritized Airtable to keep data, AI steps, and notifications in one place and cut tool-hopping," explains Shelyn. "Since our Deals, Contacts, and Roadmap already live in Airtable, triggers, AI steps, and Slack notifications maintain a single source of truth."
📺 Want to see it in action? Shelyn shared a demo of their workflow here:
The Results
The impact of Shelyn's Airtable solution has been transformative for Gradual's revenue operations. Automated pre-demo packets and weekly pipeline digests have dramatically reduced manual preparation time, while real-time contact-completeness alerts prevent follow-up delays. The system has enabled more consistent discovery of feature requests from transcripts, directly feeding their product roadmap and increasing the quality of marketing qualified leads.
Perhaps most importantly, the solution has eliminated the need for multiple ad-hoc research and reporting tools, while improving data quality through automated deduplication and missing-data checks.
What's Next
Looking ahead, Shelyn plans to expand AI-assisted enrichment and auto-updates for contact information including company details, location, and job seniority. She's also developing automations to identify sudden changes in pipeline metrics like follow-up drop-offs and stalled deals, with AI-suggested next steps delivered via Slack alerts.
"We're most excited about adding AI-powered revenue forecasting with size-weighted modeling and scenario toggles," Shelyn shares. "This will give us multiple year projections with full pricing or POC options, plus alerting when we deviate from tech stack pricing benchmarks."
Copy & Paste AI Prompt
Try Shelyn’s prompt below for your own field agent:
Analyze this sales call transcript and extract:
1. Top 3 feature requests mentioned
2. Any blockers to purchase
3. Competitive products mentioned
4. Next steps agreed upon
Format as bullet points under each heading.
Did this use case inspire you? Drop a comment below if you try a similar prompt in your own app, and share how you’re using Airtable to change the way you work for a chance to be our next Change Maker spotlight!