A freelance design team uses ThreadRecap to turn post-call WhatsApp discussions into professional client emails and internal task lists.
Jan 31, 20266 min read
A freelance design agency uses WhatsApp to coordinate with clients. After every client call, the team debriefs on WhatsApp — sharing notes, reactions, and next steps through a mix of text messages and voice notes. Here is how they turned that chaos into professional client documentation.
The situation
A 4-person design team works with 6 active clients. Each client has a WhatsApp group for quick coordination. After client calls, the team discusses:
What the client said and what they actually meant
Design direction changes
Revised timelines
Who is handling what next
These discussions happen through a mix of:
Quick text messages ("She wants the header bigger again")
Voice notes with detailed impressions ("So I just got off the call with Mark, and here is what I think he is really asking for...")
Shared screenshots and reference images
Back-and-forth about approach
The problem
The team lead needed to:
Send professional recap emails to clients after calls
Keep an internal record of decisions and commitments
Track action items across multiple client projects
Onboard new team members with context about ongoing projects
Doing this manually from WhatsApp messages was taking 45 minutes per client, per week.
The workflow
After each client call
The team discusses on WhatsApp as usual (no behavior change needed)
At the end of the day, the team lead exports the group chat with media
The Meeting Recap output is edited into a professional follow-up:
Remove internal discussions ("she's being difficult about the timeline" becomes "timeline to be discussed further")
Keep all decisions and agreed next steps
Add professional framing
This takes 5 minutes instead of 45.
The internal record
The Action Items output goes directly into the project management tool:
Each action item becomes a task
Owners are already identified from the chat
Deadlines mentioned in the conversation are captured
Voice notes made the difference
The team lead estimated that 40% of the useful content was in voice notes. Without transcription, the recaps were missing:
Detailed client feedback discussed verbally
Nuanced design opinions that people did not type out
Informal commitments ("I'll handle that tomorrow")
With ThreadRecap transcribing the voice notes, the recaps captured the full picture.
The results
Time saved
Before: ~45 minutes per client per week writing recaps manually
After: ~10 minutes per client per week (export + review + edit)
With 6 clients: ~3.5 hours saved per week
Quality improved
Recaps captured voice note content that was previously lost
Action items were more complete and accurate
Client emails went out same-day instead of days later
Onboarding simplified
New team members could read through past recaps to understand client relationships
The recap archive served as project documentation
Key takeaways
No behavior change required
The team continued using WhatsApp exactly as before. The recap workflow was added on top, not instead of.
Voice notes are not optional
For teams that communicate by voice note, transcription is essential. Text-only analysis misses too much.
Two goals, one export
Running the same export through two different analysis goals (Meeting Recap and Action Items) produces complementary outputs without re-uploading.
Edit, do not send raw
AI-generated recaps are a starting point. Spend a few minutes editing for tone and removing internal discussions before sharing with clients.
Is this your team?
If your team coordinates on WhatsApp and needs to produce professional documentation from those conversations, this workflow applies whether you are an agency, consultancy, or internal team working with stakeholders.
