From Manual Work to Automation: How CRWD AI Streamlined Participant Payouts with Dots

TL;DR

• One dashboard, many rails. Venmo, PayPal, ACH, and digital gift cards all in one platform. 
• Automated payouts in minutes instead of manual, nightly uploads.
• Happier participants. Flexible payout choices and branded flows feel native to CRWD.
• Slack-speed support. Dots answers live questions inside CRWD’s workspace, no ticket queues.

Meet CRWD AI

CRWD AI is an on-demand consumer-activation platform. Brands use it to assemble real focus groups for product testing, sampling, and IRL events, often on short notice. As activations grew from local pop-ups to campaigns for Grand Central Terminal and Roc Nation, one thing lagged: paying hundreds of participants quickly and reliably.

“We were going through all the different platforms. Weeks, months, of trial and error, and we never really felt secure on one single platform.” – Alina Cheema, Chief Product Officer

The Payout Bottleneck

• Rail mismatch. Some users wanted Venmo, others ACH or gift cards and no single tool covered everything.
• Manual friction. Every activation ended with late-night CSV edits, status checks, and support tickets about payouts.
• Growing risk. Slow or missed payments threatened CRWD’s reputation with both brands and participants.

Discovering Dots

At San Francisco Tech Week, the CRWD team met Dots and it was an instant meet-cute. 

1. Payouts via CSV uploads were tested for CRWD’s very next activation.
2. White-label branding, so payout screens were in CRWD colours and logo, which meant a smooth experience for the payees.
3. Shared Slack channel so the CRWD team received real-time answers to any questions.

Then vs. Now

Before Dots:

• Multiple payout accounts, inconsistent rails
• Hours of manual work per batch
• Miles of support tickets and emails and back-and-forth with other payout services

After Dots

• All rails in one place
• A few minutes per CSV upload
• Direct Slack access to Dots engineers

“Since switching, everything has been running super smoothly. We feel, for the first time, very secure on one platform.” – Alina

Looking Ahead

CRWD’s engineers are finalizing the full API hookup, so payments will fire automatically with zero clicks the moment an activation closes. With payouts invisible, the team is free to scale larger, multi-city campaigns without adding ops overhead.

Try It Yourself

• Brands: Spin up an instant focus group at CRWD AI.
• Builders & Ops Leads: Automate your payouts with Dots.