The Great Slackquisition

What does the Slack acquisition mean for Salesforce’s existing customers?

Slack + Salesforce: Getting slicker with Slack

Salesforce has just completed its acquisition of Slack (a Slackquisition, you could say!) It’s a big deal; A huge deal actually, with Salesforce paying $28bn for Slack. It’s also a big deal for existing Salesforce users, as Slack will impact how they leverage the power of their data and processes in Salesforce.

To put this into context, let’s walk back for a moment. Even before the pandemic moved the whole world online overnight, most knowledge workers had already gone a long way towards creating virtual workplaces. The growing sophistication and ubiquity of business messaging apps enabled the shift.

Slack is one of the clear leaders in its category. Not only is it instant, but Slack also packs a world of functionality with which email could never complete. Channels, emojis, link shortening, doc sharing, the ability to save items, highlight, tag, search, the list goes on. In summary, there is much productivity-driving stuff that people love and just didn’t get with email.

This ease of use has meant that we are all spending more of our day in Slack. When you bring Salesforce into this mix, suddenly, the possibilities are supercharged. Ultimately, the real value comes down to getting notified of anything important that happens in Salesforce, right where you are working, in Slack. That means no toggling between apps, no break in concentration, no cut and paste from one place to another.

Everything is right where you need it and how you need it.

It’s such a productivity bonus for our team at Endiem. Like many other organizations, we have team members spread across the globe, but with our integration of Slack and Salesforce, we all work as one team from one #DigitalHQ.

We can bring this to life a little more; Let’s take a moment to walk you through our current use cases at Endiem.

• Recruitment

Hiring the perfect new team member can mean managing multiple candidates. The process runs so smoothly now that everyone on the team has clear visibility of candidate status and next steps. Candidates that apply for job roles will create a lead record in Salesforce. Assignment of candidate interviews will then get sent to the relevant Endiem team member via a message in Slack, also added to your calendar and link to all the candidate details in Salesforce. Salesforce will then send notifications via a Slack channel, keeping all Endiem stakeholders up to date.

• Sales & Marketing

Jumping on a lead as soon as it comes in can make a big difference to the outcome. For that reason, at Endiem, our incoming leads are assigned in Salesforce to our Sales Account Director, and as soon as that happens, Marta receives a Slack notification in the Sales channel. There is no lag in response time with the information popping upright in the space in which Marta works. It’s also an excellent method of seeing a history of all the leads, organizing follow-up, and ensuring no one gets left behind.

• Support

You know that sinking feeling when you log into your Salesforce case queue, and it’s filled up with requests for support? For a busy Support team, the last thing you want is to lose control of the cases coming in. That’s why we have created real-time alerts directly to Slack when someone creates or updates a support case. The correct users are @mentioned, and the case gets categorized with the relevant tag. This way, we get to respond and deliver a customer resolution more quickly. It’s no coincidence there’s an SLA in Slack ;)

• Finance

At Endiem, we know full well that part of a good onboarding experience is a smooth transition from prospect to paying customer. And it pays to get the financial side of the relationship set up right out of the gate. To enable this at Endiem, on Opportunity close, the account updates from Prospect to Customer. Our finance team gets a notification in Slack to set up the customer’s invoice process, including tax information, etc. Again, this is a significant task list for the finance department, with a handy link to the specific area in Salesforce that will need updating with the relevant financial data.

That’s just four user cases that we have currently deployed in the Endiem org. It won’t stop there for us, nor will it for our customers. We are already excited about the many different ways that our customers will leverage the two platforms in the future to deliver great work in their sector.

Quite simply, it’s the tool that has been missing to connect Salesforce’s incredible and wide-ranging capabilities seamlessly with our everyday digital working lives.

The question is, how could you leverage Salesforce plus Slack? If you have a use case you’d like to discuss, we are all ears. We have the experience, and we’d love to help.