Mastering Customer Management in Slack: 7 Tips for Improved Efficiency

Especially in the age of remote work, Slack has become a powerful tool for customer communication and collaboration. Despite its versatility and flexibility, managing customer conversations efficiently can take time and effort. Here are seven tips to maximize Slack's efficiency and drive customer conversations without losing control.

# 1 Channel Guidelines

By establishing guidelines for your shared Slack channels, you can ensure everyone understands what's expected. Include instructions on how messages should be formatted and what content should be shared. You can use Slack for product issues, bugs, investigations, and quick access to critical information. However, you shouldn't have commercial conversations like renewals, upsells, or cross-sells. 

#2 Leverage Bookmarks

Getting lost in the sea of channels and conversations is easy when working with multiple clients or in a large organisation. With Slack's bookmark feature, keep track of meaningful conversations or channels you frequently use. Here are a few helpful documents and links to bookmark:

1. Your customers can easily access your training decks and calls by linking to them.

2. Ensure your FAQ page includes links so customers can find instant answers if you are offline, out of the office, or on a call.

3. Include Slack communication guidelines, including the primary and secondary POC on your end, the champion/vendor owner on the customer side, work hours, rules of engagement, and topics that can be discussed on Slack versus email.

#3 Establish discussion topics

Setting discussion topics ahead ensures everyone knows what to expect and how to contribute. Keeping conversations on topic and respecting everyone's time can reduce off-topic discussions. When entering a channel, everyone should know what to expect for project updates or support requests. Use the Topic and Description sections to provide details. 

#4 Leverage Apps and Integrations

Slack's app directory is a treasure trove of productivity tools that can make your life easier. Integrating apps like Zoom and Polly can help automate tasks like scheduling meetings, gathering feedback, and running polls.

#5 Streamline Support Tickets

Streamline workflows and improve productivity so you can focus on the strategic part of your role. Use automation tools like Thena, which can easily convert Slack messages into support tickets.

#6 Establish Response Time

To maintain efficient communication, it's crucial to establish a response time for each channel. This could be an hour, two hours, or even a day, depending on the urgency of the conversation.

#7 Communicate PTOs/Coverage

The Customer's team should know about an out-of-office or unavailable team member, and a coverage person should be assigned if your customer needs support while you are away. As a result, conversations won't get lost, and clients will feel noticed.

To avoid losing control, using Slack efficiently to manage customer conversations is crucial. The tips above will help you maximize Slack efficiency and improve customer experience.

Here are a few other helpful resources on how to manage shared Slack channels

1. How to (Actually) Manage Customer Feedback

2. Slack Connect: Manage who can join channels owned by other organizations

3. Slack Shared Channels: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet 2023

4. How to use shared Slack channels with customers

Do you have questions and want to learn more about how to use Slack shared channels efficiently? Feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin. Happy to answer any further questions!