"At Upwork, delivering fast, effortless support is essential to helping our members build a healthier financial future. With Enrich Labs' AI Coordinator, we're able to combine high performance and seamless brand customization with cross-channel memory, ensuring every interaction is connected and true to Upwork's member-first values. This is how social moves from a communications channel to an intelligence system for the entire brand."
How Upwork's Lean Social Team Boosted Productivity by 75% with an AI Teammate
Moving beyond basic automation, Upwork's social media team transformed their workflow from reactive firefighting to a proactive business intelligence engine. Here's how they did it.
The Challenge: Drowning in a Sea of Social Noise
For any major brand, the social media landscape is a 24/7 flood of notifications. At Upwork, the world's largest human and AI-powered work marketplace that connects businesses with highly skilled, AI-enabled independent talent from across the globe, the challenge was immense. With over 180,000 inbound social messages a year, their lean community engagement team was in a constant state of reactive firefighting.
"Our days started pretty reactive. We'd open up a dashboard to a flood of notifications... It was time-consuming and emotionally exhausting."
— Roxanne Kruse, Sr. Manager of Social Media & Influencer at Upwork
The team faced a classic dilemma:
- Massive Volume — Manually triaging thousands of comments, DMs, and mentions.
- Team Burnout — A rotating on-call system created anxiety and made it impossible to truly switch off.
- Missed Opportunities — Strategic, high-value engagement was being sacrificed for the urgent need to simply clear the queue.
They knew they needed to evolve beyond basic tools. They needed a true teammate.
The Solution: Onboarding a Custom AI Coordinator
Instead of adopting another rigid software dashboard, Upwork partnered with Enrich Labs to deploy a custom-trained AI Coordinator—a generative AI system embedded directly into their existing workflow in Slack.
"This wasn't about replacing humans; it was about freeing them up to be more human."
— Roxanne Kruse
The AI Coordinator was trained on Upwork's specific brand voice and business rules. Its mission was threefold:
- Automate the Noise — Instantly close spam, triage mentions, and handle up to 87% of routine cases without human intervention.
- Become a 24/7 Sentinel — Monitor for brand-relevant trends and sentiment spikes around the clock, protecting the brand even outside of business hours.
- Surface Actionable Insights — Move beyond simple moderation to identify strategic opportunities in real-time.
The Results: From Reactive Triage to Proactive Strategy
The impact of the AI Coordinator was immediate and transformative.
1. Reclaiming Strategic Time & Boosting Productivity by 75%
By automating the noise, the team reclaimed 10-15 strategic hours per week. This shift from low-value tasks to high-value work led to a 75% increase in overall team productivity.
2. Achieving a Month's Engagement Goal in a Single Post
The AI Coordinator's "Trendspotting" feature flagged a relevant TikTok about the future of work. The AI even suggested an initial response.
"Our team refined the comment and posted it. That single, AI-spotted comment ignited over 7,000 engagements, achieving 155% of our entire monthly engagement benchmark in one go."
— Roxanne Kruse
3. Becoming a Business Intelligence Engine
The most significant transformation was strategic. The AI Coordinator began producing a "Social Listening Digest," an automated report that turned thousands of Reddit posts into a clear executive summary for leadership.
"This is how social moves from a communications channel to an intelligence system for the entire brand. It informs our content, our creative, and even our product roadmap."
— Roxanne Kruse
The Blueprint for Your Success
Upwork's story is a blueprint for any team feeling overwhelmed by the demands of modern social media. The key isn't just adopting AI—it's deploying a smart, custom-configured teammate that works alongside you.
Ready to see how an AI Coordinator could transform your team?
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