🚀 Building Slack Support at Scale; Learn how to handle 100+ customers on Slack - Watch ▶️
Every business leader knows the sting of lost opportunities when customer queries go unanswered or the frustration that bubbles up when helpdesk operations hit a snag. And these aren't just operational hiccups. They're glaring pitfalls that erode trust and dent a brand's image.
Long wait times, unresolved tickets, and communication gaps aren't mere inconveniences; they're business vulnerabilities that can negatively impact the bottom line.
Slack emerged as a solution in this challenging landscape, offering real-time messaging to bridge these gaps. And, Thena, the next-generation solution to Slack B2B support takes it a step further in helping overcome Slack support and helpdesk challenges.
Want to know more about it? Here's a sneak peek into this blog's contents:
Slack, at its heart, was designed to boost team communication. But its potential reaches far beyond the realm of internal team conversations. As businesses recognized the speed, flexibility, and efficiency of Slack, it swiftly became a go-to tool for real-time customer support.
Imagine this scenario: A customer faces an issue with a product. Instead of shooting off an email and waiting hours (if not days) for a response, they can quickly reach out via the Slack Connect channel and get a real-time response, leading to instant resolution and a happier customer.
The immediacy and collaborative nature of Slack means agents can pull in resources, ask questions, and solve problems at lightning speed. The shift to Slack reflects the modern consumer's need for immediacy and directness.
Over the past ten years, customer support has changed. If for customers email or phone were the first choice when reaching out to businesses, today they want rapid solutions via their preferred channel. A study by HubSpot found that consumers want to communicate with businesses via 13 different channels, which is a lot, right?
In addition, 38% of customers are more inclined to buy from companies offering live chat support, and 51% are likely to make repeat purchases with businesses that provide this feature. This paints a clear picture: traditional support methods, while still essential, are no longer enough. Customers crave swift, real-time time support, and they expect it on the platforms they use daily.
In a B2B environment, many turn to Slack. Why? Because Slack’s real-time messaging, robust integrations, and intuitive design make customer support feel natural. Plus, with a few handy tools, Slack can turn into the ultimate communication powerhouse that facilitates digital-first, omnichannel customer support.
One tangible example is IBM. With over 350,000 employees, they've championed the use of Slack for seamless communication not just internally, but with B2B clients as well. Their CIO mentioned that by integrating Slack into their support infrastructure, they've seen faster issue resolution and more productive interactions.
Likewise, Forrester conducted a survey involving 550 Slack users globally, along with 4 decision-makers. Their findings? Deploying Slack in customer service teams led to substantial savings—up to $2.6 million in ticket costs. And the cherry on top? A remarkable 294% return on investment.
In short, customer support is moving towards fast, efficient, and multi-channel methods. And, as teams seek the best solutions, tools like Slack are emerging as the most effective for B2B support.
You may ask, "What characterizes the Slack support and helpdesk solution?" At a basic level, they should have these features:
1. Ticket management
Intelligent ticket management is the first, and most important, feature you should look for in your Slack support and helpdesk solution. The cost associated with addressing a help desk ticket manually stands at $22. Yet, by leveraging automation, we can resolve approximately 22% of all service desk tickets with minimal to no cost.
In a Slack-centric environment, it's vital to have a feature where users can easily create, update, and monitor support tickets without leaving the platform. For instance, imagine a scenario where a team member could convert a Slack message into a support ticket with a single click. Such seamlessness boosts efficiency and ensures that no issue goes unnoticed.
2. Automated workflows
Automated workflows significantly enhance agent efficiency and streamline customer support operations. In the context of a Slack support and helpdesk tool, this could involve a bot that assigns tickets based on factors like department or urgency. Equally, the tool should support emojis allowing to indicate the status of a request, whether it's under review or resolved.
Such automation expedites the response time and ensures that tickets land in the right hands from the outset.
3. Third-party integrations
An effective Slack helpdesk tool should integrate with other key business tools, including CRM, project management software, and email ticketing systems for those who still favor these support channels.
Think of the advantages for a customer success team or support reps: with Slack's connection to platforms like Salesforce or HubSpot, they can quickly retrieve a customer’s entire history and associated notes. This provides a wealth of information right at their fingertips, allowing for faster, more personalized support.
4. Analytics
Analytically advanced organizations often outperform their competitors, and this edge extends to customer service metrics. A Harvard Business Review study revealed that 80% of businesses leverage customer satisfaction scores to enhance their customer experience.
At the very least, an effective Slack helpdesk tool should include an analytics dashboard that provides real-time insights. Additionally, it should provide weekly reports highlighting recurring issues and assessing the productivity of support agents.
To cap it off, Slack helpdesk should combine smart ticketing, automation, seamless integrations, and deep analytics. However, given Slack’s limited native capabilities, you can’t really harness the platform’s full potential. Unless… You use Thena.
Thena is an intelligent B2B engagement platform for Slack, designed for modern businesses to enhance support and helpdesk interactions by meeting customers where they are.
With Thena, you can manage shared Slack channels with clients, categorize customer channels by request type, link with other in-house tools, facilitate customer request escalation, and study user behavior.
What makes Thena stand out as a complete solution for Slack support and helpdesk are its unique features. Here’s how Thena enhances your support operations via Slack:
One of Thena’s best features is intelligent ticket management. The platform uses OpenAI technology to precisely identify customer requests as part of Slack conversations, meaning your agents don’t have to scroll through messages to identify them.
Once identified, these requests are channeled to the Request Triage Channel. Here, agents can leverage automated workflows, ensuring that each request is addressed promptly and efficiently.
As we mentioned above, automating workflows and tasks is crucial to saving time for your agents and delivering faster resolutions to your customers.
Thena's automation streamlines the tasks related to customer requests from ticket initiation to resolution. How? Firstly, it auto-assigns incoming customer requests, directing tickets to the initial responder or a specified CSM. It then allows agents to use emojis like đź‘€ for ongoing requests and âś… for completed ones which speeds up ticket lifecycle.
Furthermore, Thena offers features like conversational grouping; if a customer sends subsequent requests within 2 minutes of their initial one, Thena consolidates them. Additionally, there's an auto-responding capability, allowing for pre-configured responses to be sent to messages identified as customer requests.
Thena provides another cool feature—knowledge base integration, which lets AI generate responses to the customer from your stored information within Slack.
You can get multiple AI-generated draft responses which you can pick up, edit, and send instantly to your customers. The best part? You can track AI question-answering efficacy and optimize your performance with data-rich insights.
Ultimately, this seamless integration and analytics-driven approach enhance Slack helpdesk efficiency, ensuring faster and more accurate customer interactions.
Finally, we’ve got the analytics feature that helps extract valuable insights from your engagement with customers. Thena supports an intelligent dashboard where you can find information on:
You can also track customer sentiment and other important customer service metrics. Armed with this data, you can refine and improve your customer service operations, ensuring optimal performance and resource allocation. But that’s not it.
With Thena, you can elevate your Slack helpdesk and support to unparalleled customer and agent experience, thanks to its:
Enhanced customer interactions: Thena prioritizes customer engagement. The platform is crafted to foster impactful, purposeful, and resolution-oriented interactions. Moreover, it ensures full transparency, so customers are always informed and reassured that their concerns are being addressed.
Diving into real-life experiences offers the best insights. Let's explore some customer success stories that demonstrate the transformative power of Thena’s Slack helpdesk.
Workramp, a leading learning management system, was facing challenges managing the overwhelming volume of support requests coming through various Slack channels and Intercom web chat. This significantly impacted their customer retention and success metrics.Â
After deciding to incorporate Thena's Intercom connector solutions, they've optimized their support ticket handling procedures, resulting in faster response times and freeing up 30% more capacity for their support team.
Mixpanel, an analytics platform, struggled with fragmented Slack helpdesk operations due to a disjointed workflow between Zendesk and Slack. This led to communication delays and subpar customer service. However, by adopting Thena’s Zendesk connector, Mixpanel elevated its helpdesk support, reducing response times by 95% and resolution times by 50%. Impressive, right?
Slack's rise in the customer support domain is a testament to the shift in customer expectations. With tools like Thena enhancing Slack’s capabilities, businesses can be assured of offering five-star support that not only satisfies but delights the modern customer.
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