No automation without preprocessing.
Knots helps you clean, structure, and transform data – so workflows and automations actually work.
Unlocking the power of Preprocessing
What is Data Preprocessing?
Data preprocessing transforms raw, messy, or unstructured data into a clean, structured, and usable format. It involves techniques such as cleaning, normalization, transformation, and feature extraction to prepare data for analysis, automation, and machine learning. Whether handling structured databases, semi-structured formats like JSON or XML, or unstructured sources such as emails, PDFs, images, and audio files, preprocessing ensures data quality and consistency for downstream applications.
Structuring unstructured data for automation
Knots focuses on transforming unstructured data – such as emails, attachments, scanned documents and images – into structured formats ready for automated workflows, dashboards and AI tools.
Take customer service, for example: Most data arrives unstructured and must be extracted manually. Agents typically have to download attachments, open files, search for relevant information and then copy, paste or retype it into the required fields. This manual process is time-consuming, inefficient and error-prone – but with the right tools, it can be easily solved.
Turn hours of manual data extraction into mere seconds:
✍️ Without preprocessing
Automations stall or misfire
Manual cleanups slow everything down
- Important data stays hidden inside PDFs, screenshots, or free text
⚙️ With preprocessing
Data is clean, structured, and ready to use
Automations work across systems
Machine learning models train on the right inputs
Without preprocessing, teams face delays, errors, and unnecessary manual work. These inefficiencies don’t just affect workflows — they impact your bottom line. See how automation can transform both your response times and operational costs.
Preprocess your data to save time and cut costs
Manual data handling doesn’t just slow you down — it gets expensive fast. Whether it’s cleaning attachments, structuring ticket data, or preparing information for automation, repetitive tasks in Zendesk can drain resources and delay customer service.
With Knots, you can:
Reduce first reply time by 45%
Automated preprocessing speeds up your workflows, so your support team responds faster — without the manual overhead.
Cut operational costs by 65%
Eliminate repetitive tasks and free your team to focus on what matters: delivering better customer experiences.
Scale effortlessly
Handle growing ticket volumes, automate up to 75% of routine tasks, and expand operations — all without increasing headcount.
“Before Knots, our customer support reps were rushing to complete tasks, leading to mistakes and inefficiencies. Now, the system automates task creation, document handling, and even billing processes. We’ve automated 25% of our emails, 65-75% of our billing tasks and scaled operations without increasing training time. It’s allowed us to focus on growing and retaining clients. Hands-on support and development expertise from the Knots team has been critical to our success.”
– Nancy, Liberty Debt Relief
How we preprocess data
Knots turns unstructured inputs into structured, automation-ready data — in seconds, not hours.
Our solutions were developed to tackle real-world challenges in Zendesk by automating the manual extraction of information from attachments, emails, scanned forms, images, tables, and more. Knots removes these repetitive, error-prone steps — seamlessly delivering clean, structured data ready for automation, analytics, and AI.
But pre-processing isn’t just a Zendesk problem – the challenge is the same everywhere: turning any form of input into actionable information. Whether it’s a ticket-based system, CRM or document management tool, Knots makes your data ready for automation.
Get in touch to talk about your use case!
OCR Scanner
Most tools can’t handle images, scans, or screenshots. Ours can — with unmatched accuracy. Knots OCR Scanner extracts all data from PDFs, photos, and image-based attachments (even hand-written notes) using best-in-class optical character recognition. Where others miss details, we capture them reliably.
It’s what makes preprocessing work even when the input isn’t text — and it’s what powers accurate automation across all file types.
Process Excel
Process Excel eliminates repetitive data entry tasks by extracting, structuring and integrating .xlsx and .xls data into your ticketing system, ensuring information is instantly accessible and actionable. It’s able to handle structured tables or complex free-form spreadsheets, updates 3rd party systems and makes Excel data instantly searchable.
Process DOCX
Automatically extract data from Microsoft Word files — even when the content is unstructured or mixed with tables, paragraphs, and images.
You can populate tickets and ticket fields, trigger workflows, and even sync data with third-party or legacy systems.
Pair it with OCR to further process scanned or image-based Word document content.
Process CSV
Process CSV automates CSV handling, updates tickets, performs lookups and synchronises with third-party systems – eliminating manual work and enabling advanced automation. By automatically using CSV data, you can also synchronise with legacy systems without an API, simply by receiving CSV files from them.
Built for trust
Secure, compliant, and enterprise-ready
We work with sensitive data and complex systems every day. That’s why security and scalability are at the core of every Knots solution.
We never store your customer data — and process only what’s needed.
Real-world use cases
Knots helps teams extract data from documents — and turn it into structured inputs for automation, AI, and reporting. These are just a few of the problems our customers solve every day.
Wherever you need to extract, clean, or structure information — Knots turns raw input into automation-ready data.
📊 Process Excel and CSV attachments
Read rows, columns, and cells from spreadsheets to update tickets, sync inventory, or route requests based on structured data.
📄Extract document data and update tickets automatically
Pull names, addresses, serial numbers or order info from scanned forms or uploaded DOCX files — no copy-pasting required.
🔧 Automate warranty and order checks
Extract product details from invoices or delivery slips — even scanned PDFs — and validate warranty or order status instantly.
🧹 Clean and standardize messy inputs
Normalize inconsistent values like product names, categories, or phone numbers before they reach your workflows or AI.
🤖 Prepare data for machine learning
Clean and structure historical content and attachments to generate high-quality training data for AI models — inside or outside Zendesk.
🧭 Route tickets based on structured content
Use extracted info like department, language, or location to assign tickets to the right team or trigger custom automations.
🪄 Enrich tickets before agents act
Automatically populate fields with pre-processed data from emails or attachments so agents can start helping customers immediately – no need to download or copy and paste.
📨 Bridge the gap to legacy systems
Sync even tools without APIs by sending DOCX, Excel, or CSV files by email. Knots processes them and updates Zendesk or connected platforms in real time.
Start Preprocessing with Knots
Clean, structured data is the foundation of reliable automation.
Whether you’re processing tickets in Zendesk or syncing data across systems — Knots helps you extract what matters and use it instantly.
Let’s clean it up – automatically.
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