The Biggest Business Secret - Slack | Salesforce Explained

What's up everybody? I'm Brian Tong, your guide to all things Salesforce. And this is Salesforce Explained. It's a series where we talk Salesforce and technology without the jargon or buzzwords. So make sure you subscribe and turn on your notifications so you don't miss out on any of these awesome episodes. Now, today we're talking about Slack. And if you thought this platform was just for chatting at work, well then you really don't know Slack yet. So let's get into it. And at first, Slack might look like an instant messaging platform. And while you might start by sending DMs and creating channels, it is so much more than that. It's really what we like to call a full productivity platform that makes work simpler and more pleasant. So let me explain what that all means. With Slack. Not only can everyone in your company easily communicate, but they can also automate tedious tasks that drain productivity, which lets them focus on work that matters. Right? They can also share what they know and find what they don't know faster. And of course, they can collaborate together so everyone can get work done quickly and transparently, all while maintaining trust and security. Slack is also a big piece of Salesforce Customer360, aka the portfolio of Salesforce products. You need to better connect with customers. Now, if you need a little recap of customer 360, come on. I put the link in that video in the description so you can check it out to find out and see how all those products work together. Okay, now let's talk about why you should use Slack. Well, first and foremost, so you can join the millions and millions of people all over the world who love Slack. I mean, duh. But the name of the game here is productivity, which is with a capital P. So let's look at a few ways Slack can help you achieve your productivity goals. And the first is by accelerating work with automation. With Slack, everyone in your company can speed up and simplify tasks with automation and workflows. And everyone means everyone. We're talking 80% of Slack workflows are actually built by non technical users. So you can automate daily tasks, alert the right people and and feed approvals into the right apps without ever even leaving Slack. For example, let's say if you're someone who needs to approve a bunch of things, you can build a workflow for people to submit their materials and then you can approve it with a fun emoji. Now, when you start using automation in Slack, you'll notice a huge difference in your work Fun fact, Slack users see a 26% increase in time saved due to automation. Now automation also extends to all the other apps that you're using that aren't Slack. And you probably use a few of these apps at work, right? Uh huh. Now switching between them to chase down your tasks and notifications can be a massive waste of your time, like up to 10% of your time. So you obviously want to make the most of all of this tech you're paying for. But if the apps you're using are hard to find and even harder to use, it's going to be really hard to get any value from those investments. So this is where Slack saves the day. And that's because it's so easy to bring all those apps, alerts, notifications and actions directly into Slack. In fact, There are over 2,600 apps that you can already plug into Slack, so you can easily centralize your work. Now the next major benefit of using Slack is that you can share and search knowledge right here. So here's another fun fact. Slack actually stands for for searchable log of all communication and Knowledge. I didn't even know that until just now. So when you use Slack, everyone can find all the important conversations from the past that helped shape your company. So how do you tap into all that knowledge? Well, one major way is called channels. These help you bring the right people together to organize content, share ideas, make decisions, and then keep projects moving all in one dedicated spot. And then the powerful search in Slack makes it easy to find exactly what you're looking for across the conversations in your company. Now another major benefit of Slack, which you probably already know about, is that you can connect and engage everyone in a modern conversational way. So maybe when you need to add someone to a channel so they can get quickly up to speed on a project, or maybe you want to share a video of yourself explaining something complicated so your teams all over the world can watch it. It is just so easy to collaborate in Slack. Now with Slack Connect, you can also connect the power of Slack to extend to partners like agencies, vendors or customers. And guess how many of the Fortune 100 companies use Slack Connect? Think about it. Well here. 77 out of 100. Okay, now that speaks for itself. Now you can see why Slack is a total game changer for customer companies, which are businesses that embrace AI, data and CRM to connect with their customers in a whole new way. Because when you engage with everything all together in Slack, you truly put your customers at the center of every conversation, every interaction and every decision. You make. Okay, so let's see the real impact and productivity power Slack has to offer. Let's say for whatever reason you're not already using Slack. Well, when someone leaves your company, their knowledge and expertise leave with them. But if you do have Slack, all their conversations and knowledge still exist because they've been sharing it with your company all along. So everyone else can still learn from that amazing employee even when they leave. So with everyone working together in Slack, you're just naturally accumulating a huge amount of conversational data that's unique, trusted and then relevant to your business. So all this conversational data naturally gives you a productivity power up when you bring AI data and CRM into Slack. And since Slack and generative AI are both conversational, this is a techie love match. Now, Slack GPT is the future of generative AI in the Slack, and it's totally changing the way that teams work together. Plus, once you connect Slack to your CRM, your teams can bring the CRM data that they need into where they're actually doing the work. So if you're in sales, this streamlines a lot of things for you. You can easily update pipelines that sync to Salesforce, get aligned to maximize team selling, and reduce administrative tasks like updating spreadsheets and contact info all directly in Slack. This means that you can focus more on actually selling and making that money. Now, companies that use Slack have seen a 28% increase in sales productivity, which as we all know, leads to more cha ching. So let's look at how connecting your CRM with Slack can help you with customer service. Now, when you have a complex service ticket or tickets that require a subject matter expert, you can start a swarm to get the right answers faster, right in Slack. Okay, okay, hold up. No need to panic everyone. Come on now you know I got this. Case swarming is just when a team of internal experts comes together with your customer service team to fix a problem fast. Now, case swarming in Slack is the ultimate productivity money saving turbo booster. I mean, companies that use Slack have seen a 15% average reduction in cost per ticket. Okay, now I'm looking at all my IT pros out there. Yeah, I see you, Larry. And the fact is, it's impossible to drive user adoption and provide quality support when you're managing a complex tech stack. With Slack, it can automate routine tasks, streamline support services with workflows, and increase the adoption and usage of all their apps. And this means you can deliver services faster and more efficiently while lowering costs. See, Slack really is for everyone. And even though those were some really practical examples, come on now. You can have fun in Slack, too. You can react to posts with any emoji your heart desires. You can create custom emojis. And if you want to get just real fancy schmancy with people, you can even trigger a workflow with an emoji. Okay, now you can also join a local work channel to meet up at an event or get date night recommendations. Hey, want to share how you score tickets to the Taylor Swift concert? Create a Swifties channel. Yes, that's a real Slack channel at Salesforce, with over 500 members that I may or may not have looked at one time or another for research purposes only. So, long story short, Slack can help you be more productive while having fun. And. And that's how you create a better company culture. And it's a win, win, win. Okay, now that's all for this episode of Salesforce Explained, but you can still level up your Slack skills. To learn how Salesforce runs its own business on Slack, click the link on your screen to visit the free streaming service Salesforce Plus. Hey, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.