Building an AI Automation Strategy for a Global Collectibles Auction Platform

Background

The Collecting Group operates a portfolio of specialist auction platforms, including Collecting Cars, one of the UK's most recognized online car auction marketplaces. Specializing in curating collectible, sought-after, and unique items, they make it easy to buy and sell worldwide. With rapid growth across multiple markets, an international team, and an increasingly complex operational stack, TCG had reached the point where manual processes were becoming a strategic liability. The COO had a clear mandate: identify and build automation that either drives revenue or reduces headcount dependency. Not SaaS consolidation. Not tooling for tooling's sake. High-leverage process automation, executed well. They needed an experienced team who could move fast, integrate deeply, and build systems that would last.

The Challenge

TCG had the operational complexity of a scaling enterprise but needed the pace and flexibility of a startup. Inbound enquiries from car consignors were landing in Salesforce with no automated follow-up — a direct revenue leakage point. Sales reps were manually chasing leads. Across five departments, there was no consolidated view of what could be automated. Cross-platform integrations were done manually. No internal automation capability existed.

Our Approach

n8n Lab came in as an embedded automation team. Rather than delivering a single project and stepping away, the goal from day one was to become TCG's automation function — moving through discovery, build, and iteration as a long-term partner. The engagement ran across two tracks simultaneously: deploying a live voice agent for the Collecting Cars enquiry flow, and conducting structured discovery across every major department to build a comprehensive automation roadmap.

Pillar 01: The Collecting Cars AI Voice Agent

When a car seller submits an enquiry on Collecting Cars, that lead enters Salesforce and needs to be qualified quickly. Historically, this meant a manual call from a consignment specialist: time-consuming, inconsistent, and subject to business-hours constraints. We built a fully automated calling system that handles the initial qualification conversation end to end.

Call Outcomes

• Ready to Proceed — Qualified seller, clear next steps. Consignment specialist notified via Slack with full AI summary.
• Wants Human Callback — Seller prefers to speak with a person. Escalation alert triggered with full context.
• Other Outcome — No answer, inconclusive, or disqualified. Logged and routed for review.

Pillar 02: The AI Automation Development Roadmap

In parallel with the voice agent build, we ran structured discovery across every major department at TCG. Each session surfaced workflows that would reduce headcount dependency or directly support revenue, in line with the COO's two filters. The output: a tiered, prioritised roadmap across five departments, packaged into an Excel workbook with per-department assessment templates.

Pillar 03: Ongoing Automation Program

The roadmap becomes the backlog. n8n Lab continues as the embedded build team, executing highest-priority workflows quarter by quarter, maintaining live systems, and expanding TCG's automation capability over time. This isn't a one-off engagement — it's a long-term automation partnership.

The Outcome

Within weeks, TCG had a live AI voice agent handling Collecting Cars enquiries in production — qualifying sellers 24/7, routing outcomes to Salesforce and Slack automatically. Simultaneously, the leadership team received a complete, prioritised automation roadmap spanning five departments — every workflow classified by tier, ROI potential, and implementation complexity, ready for exec review and quarterly execution.