In this interview, Carrie Chow talks with Aisling Brennan, Manager of Global Planning and Analytics at Wayfair, about how the retailer has embedded Slack as a central communication hub and leveraged Slackbot, Salesforce Channels, and G Suite integrations to dramatically boost productivity. Aisling explains that Slack serves as a command center for cross‑functional work, and that the introduction of Slackbot enables AI‑driven summaries, meeting preparation, and data extraction from Google Sheets, cutting down repetitive tasks. Wayfair reports saving roughly 500,000 work hours per year, translating into about $15.5 million in productivity value. The conversation covers the evolution of Slack usage, the change‑management challenges of rolling out AI tools, the future vision of AI agents that can take actions on behalf of users, and practical advice for other retailers on governance, security, and partnering with Slack for ethical AI deployment.
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Slackbot is powering the new speed of work, and we're going to learn how one of the world's largest home retailers, Wayfair, is using Slackbot, Salesforce Channels, and Slack to save 500,000 hours annually and drive more than $15 million in productivity value. Carrie Chow joined by Aisling Brennan, Manager of Global Planning and Analytics at Wayfair. Aisling, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. And surprise, guess what? This right here, speaking of Wayfair, this is a Wayfair table. So shout out, thank you for helping us out with this and our Salesforce+ set.
I love to hear it. I knew it looked nice.
Right? Aisling, briefly tell us about your role at Wayfair, but how important is Slack to your day-to-day?
Yeah, absolutely. So nice to meet everyone. My name is Aisling. I am the manager As Carrie mentioned, I manage the revenue platforms for Wayfair for our sales teams. I just came in from Boston this last night. So Slack, I would say, is really a central command center for me personally, but I know for so many others. You know, it's our primary, and really primarily our solely form of communication. It's how we interact cross-functionally, it's how we get things done, it's how we stay productive.
Every morning, I kick off the morning figuring out what do I need to do, all in Slack, right? And I'm curious about Wayfair's own Slack journey, right? How is Slack set up across your teams today? How has it evolved to support collaboration between sales, design, logistics, delivery, everything here?
Yeah, absolutely, and that's a great question. And I love the way you asked, you check it first first thing in the morning. So, you know, I'd say the evolution has really changed from, you know, becoming a primary platform for communication to really organizing your day and that knowledge transfer. So, you know, when you come in in the morning, you can ask Slack, you know, "What are action items that I need to follow up on?" I love that. That's one of my favorite prompts. It's under the Brainstorm in Slackbot. You know, it brings up things that you might have missed from conversations that happened earlier in the week, and it allows you to really close those loops.
It's the advancement, right? Going next level. You've already built a strong foundation with Salesforce Channels within Slack, but at what point did you realize, hey, you know what? Slackbot could maybe take me to the next level of productivity?
Yeah, certainly. So, you know, even as I mentioned, being able to prepare for meetings. You know, if I am working with stakeholders and I need to understand what is top of mind for them, and what have they been discussing in different channels, or conversations that may have occurred with other members of my team. I can pull that up in Slackbot and understand exactly where the project sits, what action items need to be taken.
From just a day-to-day, in your experience, like, how has that impacted you? Because, like, to your point, I don't know how much time I used to spend trying to do all that research right before a meeting. Now I'm just clicking, and I'm like, "Oh, you know what? I'm prepared." And I can focus on maybe other tasks.
Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, preparing for meetings, and another phenomenal aspect is the integration with G Suite. So, you know, not only are you able to index on those Slack conversations and close the loop there, but you're able to pull in data from so many other places. You know, we can scan Google Sheets and do a little bit of analysis there before we even enter the meeting, all right within Slack where we're already communicating.
So smooth, that's what we love, that integration process. You just launched Slackbot earlier this year. Y'all are trailblazers, which I love. How did teams respond to Slackbot? And I would love if there's, whether it's metrics or even just anecdotes, can you share anything about that impact when you introduced Slackbot?
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a great question. And when you're working in a large organization, there's always change management. There's always a little bit of protection of your workflow or a little, you know, healthy skepticism. But I think the aha moment really came for everyone when they realized it's not adding work to their day, it's reducing it significantly. It's not another step, it's removing several steps. You're not switching screens, you're not pivoting between platforms. Everything is in one place. And the layer of AI on top of that to really summarize it all for you from all these different sources is incredibly powerful.
Yeah, we kinda joke like we're anti-swivel chair here. Not from a Wayfair standpoint, 'cause I know y'all be selling swivel chairs, but from a work standpoint, you know, you wanna be in the one place all the time, and that's what Slack does. Wayfair saves nearly 500,000 hours annually, seen a $15.5 million increase, estimated productivity impact from Slack. As you scale Slackbot adoption across the organization, I'm curious, where do you see the biggest biggest opportunity for AI to maybe transform how work gets done at Wayfair?
Yeah, I mean, and those numbers speak for themselves. You know, when you have so many users in so many countries and so many time zones, the way we're able to save time right now, we're able to use AI summaries to get people caught up to speed. I've already spoken to the integrations. I think the next stage, the next path forward to really unlock that key success productivity will be layering in the AI power to actually take actions for us.
I love the fact that you mentioned the international aspect, right? Because now this agentic technology— in the past, you would have to wait certain business hours, right, to address, hey, I've got a question here, I've got a ping here.
Mm-hmm.
Somebody's going to have to wait till somebody's working. But now with AI agents, with Slackbot, These things are taken care of and far more efficiently than I imagined before.
Absolutely, absolutely. You don't have to wait for another stakeholder to enter the conversation, but also really importantly too, you're saving your colleagues' time. You know, if I have a question that I know a certain engineer might have the answer to, I don't have to necessarily bother them. You know, you're able to gain their own knowledge that they have told people before, maybe in a Slack channel previously, and it's right there for you.
That's such a great point. I'm curious, as I mentioned, y'all are paving the path here as trailblazers, having already deployed Slackbot. I would love to know, what advice would you give to, say, other retailers who are either just starting to use Slackbot or thinking about using Slackbot?
Yeah, absolutely. So I would say for retailers, or all organizations really, the vision is there, and don't be afraid of adopting AI. But also, you know, understand how to roll it out is just as important as well. The implementation process for AI, the governance is crucial as well. And having a partner like Slack who is not only innovative but ethical, protects our data, has, you know, the security measures that we expect from a partner is crucial.
If you were to sum up Slackbots benefits, like in a couple sentences, regard— like you've kind of— we've dove deep into some of these use cases, the day to day. But if you were to sum up Slackbot's impact to someone, just anyone, how would you describe like the impact Slackbot has had on Wayfair's productivity?
Yeah, I mean, just the reduction in repetitive tasks, the reduction in head swiveling, that knowledge, you know, it gives access for company knowledge to anyone who has access to that Slack channel. And people can be curious, people can learn about what's going on in our engineering channels, and maybe they don't work, or someone on the engineering team can learn about how our customers are doing, all just by having Slackbot at their fingertips.
I love that. Is it fair to say swivel chairs really good at Wayfair site? Not so good for business operations. Is that fair?
Exactly. Keep the swivel chairs, leave them to Wayfair.
Exactly. I love it. Ashley, thank you so much for your insights on how Wayfair is using Slackbot. Appreciate that. To learn more about Slackbot and what it can do for your organization, be sure to scan the QR code on your screen.
