Transform your Slack into a powerful customer communication channel in 2023

Slack is a cloud-based platform that has become a popular communication tool, particularly in the business world. It allows teams to communicate in real-time and has largely replaced email for many companies. With the introduction of Slack Connect, it has also become a platform for interacting with customers and building relationships with partners and leads. In 2023, a significant portion of B2B revenue will be managed on Slack, making it important for businesses to have effective ways to manage customer interactions on the platform in order to protect and grow their revenue. If you want to increase your company's NRR, one way to do that is by providing excellent customer service on Slack, which will improve customer satisfaction by making it easier for them to connect with you in real-time. Managing customer communication in Slack can be challenging due to the high volume of messages and lack of native applications, so we have compiled a list of 11 ways to excel and be intelligent about it.

11 ways to transform your Slack workspace into a powerful communication channel with your customer:

Set up a dedicated Slack channel for customer support

Create a dedicated Slack channel for the customer as soon as the sale is closed and invite all relevant stakeholders from the customer organization and your account team. This will provide context for your tool and allow for centralization of the onboarding and implementation process. All stakeholders can use the channel for issues and support-related inquiries, making it visible to both parties.

Automate first message re-introducing your tool and team

With Thena, configure your customer Slack Channel's first message to be an introduction note with pre-existing templates based on customer tier, and location. The configurable message may include features bought, communication plan, implementation plan, and introduction to account team. This reduces efforts in setting up channel agenda, and expectations with each customer manually.

Use Thena Request Management

Thena monitors customer messages on Slack, detect requests using AI and sends notifications to internal Slack channels. This allows teams to collaborate on the requests and assign them to team members within Slack. Thena also organizes requests in Kanban and list formats within Slack and the webapp.

Use Slack's threading feature

‍Slack's collaboration feature, Threads is incredibly useful and powerful. Slack Threads allow you to have focused discussions within a specific channel and specific people without cluttering up other conversations

Connect Slack and Email Ticketing System

With Thena, you can link Slack messages to tickets in email ticketing systems like Zendesk, Intercom, Hubspot, and Freshdesk. This allows you to centralize all customer inquiries and connect the conversations bi-directionally. Your customer support team members won't have to switch between tools and your customers won't have to leave Slack, resulting in a seamless experience for everyone.

Setup SLA breach alerts on Slack

Customers can be configured with specific Service Level Agreements (SLAs) based on their tier and importance. The Thena platform will send alerts to designated internal channels when an SLA is breached. The volume of these alerts can be tracked daily or weekly to ensure that customer expectations are being met. If necessary, adjustments can be made to align with the customer's needs.

Collect CSAT on Slack

Using Thena, you can enable customer satisfaction (CSAT) scoring using a 2-point or 5-point system. When a ticket is closed, customers receive a message under the same thread asking them to rate their satisfaction. Thena calculates CSAT scores for individual customers and for groups of customers using its workspace analytics.

Allow customer escalation

Superior customer service with high CSAT and NPS is achieved when customers are empowered to escalate based on the urgency of the raised issue. Allowing escalation will make you aware of customer dissatisfaction which is critical to know for the retention and expansion strategy. Customer escalating will also allow you with prioritization and address escalated issues at the highest priority. You can configure customer escalation with Thena.

Create tickets for engineering, billing and legal teams

With Thena, you can work with your internal teams across different departments by easily turning customer messages into internal tickets. For instance, if a customer has a problem that needs to be resolved by the engineering team or if they have a billing-related question that can only be answered by the billing team, Thena makes it easy to collaborate internally by enabling teams to create tickets that goes to different departments to help address the issues.

Send product newsletters and important customer-wide notices on Slack

Using Thena, you can now easily send updates about your product to your customers through Slack. Simply choose a template and send messages in bulk to your customers' Slack channels. You can also track the engagement of these messages and schedule multiple campaigns targeting different customers at the same time. This is a convenient way to frequently engage with your customers, especially if they are no longer using email as their primary mode of communication.

Monitor customer service metrics

The Thena dashboard can be used to review key metrics related to customer engagement in Slack, including first response times, resolution times, and customer satisfaction (CSAT). By connecting Thena data with customer relationship management (CRM) data, you can get a more holistic view of service metrics and customer transaction and product usage history. This can help you prioritize retention strategies and ensure that you are providing high-quality support to your customers.

Thena enables customer service on Slack at scale. Sign up today.