About Ontop
Part of Y Combinator and rated one of Colombia’s Top 100 Most Important Startups for 2022, Ontop is a growing international payroll services and workforce management company. Ontop enables organizations to onboard and pay global employees while remaining fully compliant with each country’s legal requirements.
Ontop employs 200 people, including legal experts who manage payroll and employee hiring services. Tomas Giraldo, the Employee of Record (EOR) Product Manager, spearheaded the implementation of Ontop’s internal AI Agent in an attempt to support the sales team with FAQs and free up the legal team for strategic tasks.
What challenge did Ontop face?
Ontop’s legal team was frequently bombarded with repetitive questions from the sales team about offerings in different jurisdictions, especially related to international payroll, hiring, and compliance. Although sales had access to the relevant documentation, they rarely reviewed it. The company needed a way to reduce manual legal workload and allow the legal team to focus on strategic tasks.
“To reduce the manual processes and operational tasks our legal team was facing when having to constantly answer frequently asked questions. And, so that they could focus entirely on strategic tasks rather than answering questions salespeople could direct to a different place.”
How did Ontop solve it with CustomGPT.ai?
Tomas Giraldo, Product Manager at Ontop, led the initiative to find an AI-powered solution. After evaluating several options, he selected CustomGPT.ai for its ease of use and business-grade capabilities. Ontop used the platform to build “Barry,” an internal AI Agent integrated with Slack.
Barry answers sales team FAQs using company documentation and provides cited answers for verification. A native integration replaced an initial Zapier setup, further reducing query times. A dedicated Slack channel and dashboard were added to track usage, monitor performance, and flag training needs.
“Now we have a dedicated Slack channel, and we can recall and recapitulate everything and store it in a Google Sheet or any report to see who is asking more questions and in what areas.”
What results did Ontop achieve?
- 400+ complex questions answered monthly
- 60% acceptance rate in a legally sensitive field
- Response time reduced from 20 minutes to 20 seconds
- 130 hours saved per month for the legal team
- Improved sales team productivity and faster client responses
- Enhanced visibility into training needs and internal knowledge gaps
- Active exploration of new use cases for the AI Agent
| Factor | Before CustomGPT.ai | After CustomGPT.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Response time | 20 minutes per question | 20 seconds per question |
| Legal team hours on FAQs | ~130 hours per month | Redirected to strategic work |
| Repetitive questions to legal | 100+ per week | Handled by Barry; sales no longer interrupt legal for common queries |
| Source citation on answers | Informal / none | Every answer includes a citation |
| Sales team autonomy | Low — dependent on legal | High — self-serve via Slack |
| Visibility into knowledge gaps | None | Dashboard + Slack channel tracking |
| Legal team focus | Reactive — answering FAQs | Strategic legal work |
Why it Worked
- Easy access through Slack: The AI Agent was integrated directly into Slack, the primary communication tool used by Ontop’s sales team. This seamless access encouraged adoption without requiring a change in workflow.
- Trusted, citation-backed answers: Each response from the bot included citations, which gave both the sales and legal teams confidence in the information’s accuracy. This reduced the risk of misinformation and built trust in the system.
- Legal team time saved: With the bot handling over 100 questions weekly, sales no longer needed to interrupt legal staff for common queries. This allowed the legal team to focus on strategic tasks instead of repetitive ones.
- Real-time insights and accountability: Using dashboards and reporting features, Ontop could track usage patterns, monitor response quality, and identify knowledge gaps or training opportunities within the sales team.
- No-code, fast deployment: CustomGPT.ai’s no-code platform allowed Ontop to launch their AI Agent quickly and efficiently, without needing developer support, making the setup and iteration process smooth and agile.
Conclusion
CustomGPT.ai empowered Ontop to streamline communication between sales and legal, enabling both teams to focus on what they do best. By automating repetitive inquiries with AI, Ontop improved internal efficiency and performance.
Frequently Asked Questions
How did Ontop use CustomGPT.ai?
Ontop used CustomGPT.ai to build an internal AI agent called “Barry,” trained on company documentation covering legal requirements, payroll processes, and EOR compliance rules. Barry was integrated with Slack and deployed to answer repetitive compliance and payroll questions from the sales team — questions that had previously required direct involvement from the legal team.
What results did Ontop achieve with CustomGPT.ai?
Ontop’s legal team saved 130 hours per month. Response time dropped from 20 minutes to 20 seconds. Barry handles over 400 complex questions monthly and maintains a 60% acceptance rate in a legally sensitive, compliance-critical environment.
How much time did Ontop save with its AI chatbot?
Ontop saved 130 legal team hours per month by deploying Barry. That time was redirected from answering repetitive sales FAQs to strategic legal work, with no additional headcount required to achieve the gain.
How did Barry improve sales efficiency?
Barry gave Ontop’s sales team instant access to accurate, citation-backed answers to compliance and payroll questions. Response time dropped from 20 minutes to 20 seconds, allowing sales reps to get the information they needed without waiting for or interrupting the legal team. Sales could focus on selling instead of chasing answers.
Why was Slack integration important?
Slack is Ontop’s primary internal communication tool. Deploying Barry inside Slack removed all friction from adoption no new tool, no separate login, no behavior change required. Sales reps ask Barry questions in the same place they already send messages. This was a primary driver of sustained, high-volume daily usage.
What is an internal AI chatbot?
An internal AI chatbot is an AI assistant trained on a company’s own private documentation — policies, legal frameworks, compliance guides, product specs that answers employee questions instantly without requiring human expert involvement. It is deployed inside enterprise tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams and operates only on the organization’s proprietary data. Unlike public AI tools, it does not use general internet knowledge; its answers are grounded in the company’s actual internal content.
Can AI chatbots reduce legal team workload?
Yes. At Ontop, the CustomGPT.ai-powered AI chatbot handled over 100 questions per week that would otherwise have required legal team responses. This saved 130 hours per month and allowed legal professionals to redirect their time to strategic tasks. The enabling factor was citation-backed answers: because Barry referenced its source document in every response, the legal team trusted its accuracy and did not need to review or validate each answer individually.
What makes CustomGPT.ai useful for enterprise teams?
CustomGPT.ai is a no-code RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) platform that lets enterprises build AI agents trained on their own documentation without engineering resources. Key capabilities include citation-backed answers that reference source documents, native Slack and API integrations, real-time usage analytics dashboards for tracking adoption and flagging knowledge gaps, and GDPR and SOC2 compliance for data security. Enterprises can deploy a production-ready internal AI agent in days, not months.
