You want to bring all your tools and resources together in Slack.
Have a holistic view of your customers.
Let your team work more productively.
Eliminate distractions and end continuous context switching.
Ultimately what you desire is to make a difference in how you work, make better choices, improve processes, and take more control over your work.
By embracing the Slack-first approach, all these can become a reality. 💁
Let's picture how you can manage processes without leaving Slack, how to drive sales and support, how to respond to incidents, and the rest of your workflows, how to turn Slack into your Digital HQ, your single source of truth and a single point of access to your entire organization.
We can imagine that you’ve already thought about using Slack integrations from the Slack app directory.
But here’s the deal about Slack integrations:
You may need more than 1 Slack app to utilize one of your tools ( say HubSpot ) in Slack to its full function.
Supposing your org has 60 software apps in your tool stack. To use all 60 of them in Slack, you’ll at least double this figure.
There’s also a high probability that you might not be able to find exactly what you need.
Depending on your needs, you may need to build a Slack bot from scratch, through APIs, and spend a lot of time and effort to host and maintain code.
Here is your bestie; Actioner
Actioner is a platform allowing you to integrate your entire stack, workflows, and processes with Slack.
It’s a single source of truth and a gateway to all your Slack integrations.
It is for your team that wants to take its performance to the next level. You can build apps tailored for Slack with no-code, integrate any tool with open API, and share solutions with a broader community with Actioner.
Any app you install from the Actioner app directory or the custom apps you built on your own is accessible through the Actioner app in Slack. This means you can use them all just by having Actioner as an app in Slack.
Knowledge workers can now enjoy the freedom and flexibility they need to succeed in today's fast-paced business world.
Chapter 2
RevOps automation in Slack
If you'd like to;
Take all sales actions in Slack.
Manage the entire deal pipeline and qualify leads more timely.
Identify and analyze the growth opportunities in your operations.
And connect sales professionals with the SMEs quickly.
👉 RevOps automation in Slack is just what you need.
If you’re a RevOps professional, you are responsible for driving revenue growth and building customer relationships via tools such as HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive. You strive to streamline the sales process and improve conversion rates while tracking sales performance metrics and setting up successful sales strategies.
RevOps requires working closely with cross-functional teams such as marketing, product, and customer support to ensure successful sales outcomes and customer satisfaction.
To perform your job at its best, ideally, you should have all your tools and resources at your fingertips. However, managing them consumes your time and your energy.
Using Actioner, you can take all sales actions in Slack, such as creating and updating deals, leads, and other CRM data. You can also broadcast important updates to the right people as soon as they happen, automatically or manually, and bring visibility to your work by keeping stakeholders informed on deal progress and other important changes.
Dedicate Slack channels to key accounts to keep all comms and updates in one place for easier access and clear history.
Loop in subject matter experts, streamline handoffs with a single click and collaborate with the broader team in deal rooms.
Whether you need to research companies and leads faster, enrich lead data, or request a sales engineer for a POC or demo, do them all in Slack.
📍 This app is available in Actioner app directory and built by the Actioner team using Actioner. It’s ready to install and be used in Slack right away. After you install it, you can customize it for Zoho, Pipedrive, or any other CRM. Feel free to contact us through hello@actioner.com or our community.
RevOps automation use cases
We’ve wrapped up some Slack-first sales best practices in detail that you might want to check out.
📍 These use cases come with the app Slack-first sales automation with HubSpot itself, but they can be customized. If you need help building another type of workflow or require a different type of automation, please contact us.
Notifications for new contacts allow your SDR team to keep track of leads throughout their lifecycle. You can convert leads, add notes or tasks, or update their status faster without leaving Slack. They can improve the lead work rate by decreasing response time.
Deal rooms allow you and your team to collaborate with different subject matter experts, providing you with a 360-degree view of your clients. You can access and enrich client data (whether it’s located in a CRM, product analytics, or a CS tool) anytime in deal rooms, which are dedicated Slack channels for specific deals.
When a company is assigned to your Account executive or Customer success manager, they get a DM from Actioner in Slack. They can show associated leads and add tasks and notes through smart action buttons in the DM.
When a new contact is created and associated with the company you own in HubSpot, you’ll receive a DM in Slack from Actioner. You can quickly log a meeting or run other relevant actions without leaving Slack.
When a lead is turned into an opportunity in HubSpot, you and your team will be notified to celebrate the brand-new opportunity. The smart actions in the notification also allow you to add handoff notes for the associated Account executive or share the news with the AE team instantly in Slack.
You can set criteria for ready-to-convert leads, such as “When the lead score is higher than X, the lead is ready to be converted.” In this case, Actioner notifies you to follow up on the lead through actions such as sending emails, adding tasks, and more right in Slack.
Your SDR team will be notified in the #leads channel when a contact is updated but does not have an owner, allowing you to assign an SDR without leaving Slack.
When there’s a new opportunity, your AE team will receive a notification in a dedicated Slack channel to ensure ease of the handoff between SDR and AE.
Account executives receive a direct message from Actioner in Slack when a new deal is assigned to them in HubSpot, allowing them to update the deal, view notes, and more without leaving Slack.
You can define key deals as deals meeting certain criteria. Actioner, then, allows you to collaborate on key deals in a separate Slack channel (deal room) when a new deal is created and fits the criteria you’ve set previously.
When a deal is closed, your AEs and CSMs will be informed that the customer is ready to handoff through the #handoffs channel. They can view previous notes and add handoff notes or tasks easily using the smart action button in the notification.
For won deals in HubSpot, you’ll get notified with a celebration gif to mark won deals in a dedicated Slack channel. You can add notes to the deal or create a winning story quickly through the notification.
Whenever a deal in HubSpot is lost, your team will be notified in your Slack channel for lost opportunities and details. You can add or update the loss reason or a re-engagement task through the notification.
When a deal is closed without any explanation in HubSpot, your sales manager and Account executive will be notified in Slack with the follow-up actions to add a note or update the closing reason.
Chapter 3
Conversational ticketing
If you're looking to;
Streamline your customer service process.
Resolve issues more timely.
Gain a deeper understanding of your customers.
And connect agents with the right experts quickly.
👉 Conversational ticketing is the solution you've been looking for.
In your role as a support professional, you are responsible for providing high-quality customer service and resolving issues via tools such as Zendesk and Freshdesk. You strive to streamline support processes and improve response times while tracking customer inquiries and feedback and setting up a positive customer experience.
Having Slack-first support is revolutionary for customer support. It offers conversational ticketing for your modern support team and allows you to resolve customer issues quickly.
Using Actioner, you can easily convert Slack messages into tickets with an emoji and track ticket progress and related conversations in Slack.
By automating typical actions, you can save tons of time and avoid manual work.
Not a fan of robotic automation? You can set your human-in-the-loop workflows.
Actioner helps you to swarm on cases with your team inside Slack by connecting agents with the right experts in dedicated Slack-swarming channels. You can involve experts from finance, legal, operations, sales, or other departments with just a single click. Keep all communications and updates in the swarm channel for easier access and clear history.
It gives you instant access to operational metrics using customizable actions to analyze service desk metrics in seconds and share them with stakeholders in Slack. You can track request volume, measure customer satisfaction, track first response and resolution times, and much more.
Conversational ticketing apps available in Actioner app directory
📍 Conversational ticketing app in Actioner app directory is built by Actioner team using Actioner. You can install and use it in Slack right away. But you can also customize this app, tailor it for Freshdesk, or another ticketing tool. You can always contact us through hello@actioner.com or our community.
Conversational ticketing use cases
Here are some conversational ticketing best practices that you might find useful.
📍 These use cases come with the app Conversational ticketing with Zendesk itself. If you have another type of workflow or require some distinct automation, please contact us.
You’ll get notified in Slack when new tickets are created in Zendesk. The notification also provides context and allows you to take action quickly, such as assigning, replying, or updating the ticket.
From the moment a request is opened to the ticket getting archived, you can manage the entire Zendesk ticket lifecycle and track updates in Slack by prioritizing and resolving tickets. Utilize channels, threads, and emojis to streamline your resolution flow.
Adding ticket emoji to Slack messages, you can open requests in Zendesk automatically, reply to the ticket through the message thread and update the ticket status to “solved” using the smart action button.
You can dedicate a Slack channel for the help desk. Whenever a message is posted in that channel, including specific keywords, a ticket is created automatically in Zendesk.
When you dedicate Slack channels for customer support with Actioner, you can comment on tickets by replying to message threads. Requesters and agents track ticket comments right in Slack.
When you close Zendesk tickets, archive them in Slack quickly so you can get back to work on other requests.
Chapter 4
Slack-first incident and on-call management
In case you desire to;
Respond to incidents quickly.
Manage the entire incident process in Slack.
And level up collaboration among your incident response team.
👉 Slack-first incident and on-call management is exactly what you need.
As an incident response team manager, you are responsible for managing and responding to incidents related to products or services offered by your organization. IM tools such as PagerDuty or OpsGenie are your work's building stone. You strive to minimize the impact of these incidents and ensure customer satisfaction while tracking performance metrics such as incident resolution times and customer feedback.
To prevent future incidents, you determine and analyze root causes and collaborate closely with cross-functional teams such as product management, engineering, and customer support. You are responsible for ensuring the quality and reliability of your org's products or services and that your customers have a positive experience.
Slack-first incident management can be defined as the experience in which you can easily create and update incidents in your systems without leaving Slack.
Here Actioner comes into the picture, it brings all incident actions into Slack allowing your team to reach incident resolutions faster and keep everyone informed instantly along the way.
It provides response teams with a context-aware view of incidents. Using Actioner-powered incident war rooms in Slack, you can level up collaboration. With smart notifications and reminders, you always stay on top of updates, take the next best actions through follow-up action buttons, and resolve incidents faster. All comms and updates are kept in this channel for a better case-swarming experience, with easy access and clear history.
You can track everything related to their incidents in Slack, gaining insights into areas of success and opportunities for improvement. This helps teams identify vulnerabilities in their systems and processes and learn how they perform during incidents.
Slack-first incident and on-call management apps available in Actioner app directory
📍 This app is available in Actioner app directory and is built by Actioner team using Actioner. It can be installed and used in Slack directly. But you can also customize and tailor it for OpsGenie, or other IM tools as well. Feel free to contact us through hello@actioner.com or our community.
Slack-first incident and on-call management use cases
You might find these best practices helpful for incident and on-call management in Slack.
📍 These use cases come with the app Slack-first incident and on-call management with PagerDuty itself. If you have another type of workflow or require some distinct automation, please contact us.
You can view your on-call list and send handoff requests to your preferred Slack channel. Your teammates can quickly take the on-call when your manager can suggest someone take it using smart action buttons in Slack.
You can manage and track end-to-end incident lifecycle through Slack by connecting all your IM apps. Enable real-time communication and collaboration for your incident response team during an incident in dedicated Slack channels with Actioner.
Once an incident is resolved, remind your team to create follow-up tasks in Jira upon incident resolution, crate postmortems or notify your incident response teams to create Statuspage incidents.
You can inform your customers about the incident status, updates, and resolutions with Statuspage in the war room without leaving Slack.
Chapter 5
DevOps automation for engineering teams using Slack
If you want to;
Take necessary actions in Slack during the CI & CD process,
Deliver software faster.
And level up collaboration among your engineering team.
👉 DevOps automation in Slack is exactly what you need.
As being a part of the DevOps team; you are responsible for the development and deployment of software via tools such as GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket.
You strive to streamline the software development lifecycle and improve the quality and reliability of software releases while tracking KPIs and setting up successful DevOps processes.
You work to identify and analyze system issues and automate software delivery to enhance operational efficiency and reduce downtime. You collaborate closely with cross-functional teams such as development, testing, and operations to ensure successful software releases and optimal system performance.
Here is the thing; stale pull requests, constant tool switching, and repetitive manual actions hurt the DevOps team's work by causing delays, reducing productivity, introducing confusion and errors, and creating security risks.
Through DevOps automation in Slack, your team will collaborate more effectively, automate repetitive tasks, and reduce the need for manual intervention. You’ll speed up software delivery, provide better visibility into your pull requests, and simplify your workflows. DevOps automation in Slack will let your team work more efficiently.
Actioner connects the DevOps stack with Slack seamlessly, automating critical processes on continuous integration and delivery. With out-of-the-box solutions, Actioner streamlines the PR review process, keeps you informed about every update related to a pull request, and reports your team about changes in the code base in Slack.
Without leaving Slack, your engineers can run CI CD pipelines manually. Ultimately, you can easily manage the entire software development process within Slack, providing real-time and actionable notifications and democratizing data across an organization.
📍 These apps are available in Actioner app directory and are built by Actioner team using Actioner. They can be installed and used in Slack immediately. But you can also customize them and tailor them for other tools as well. Feel free to contact us through hello@actioner.com or our community.
DevOps automation use cases
The following are some DevOps automation best practices you might find useful in Slack.
📍 These use cases come with the apps above, but you might have another type of use case for DevOps automation in Slack; you can also build actions and workflows on your own using Actioner. Please contact us if you need help building another type of workflow or automation.
Are you looking to run GitHub actions workflows in Slack? Just complete a few simple steps to turn GitHub Actions workflows into ready-to-run Slack actions. After, you can manually run your workflow in seconds by calling Actioner in Slack.
Want your team to know workflow progress? After you run a workflow, they will be notified in your preferred Slack channel whether the build status is successful, failed, or in progress to identify errors, failed codes, and slowdowns.
Are you looking to run Bitbucket pipelines in Slack? To trigger Bitbucket pipelines in Slack, you just need to complete a few steps in Actioner to convert Bitbucket pipelines into an action to run in Slack. Then, you’ll be able to run that action any time you want in Slack.
Would you like to share pipeline status with your team? In your preferred Slack channel, your team will be notified when a pipeline runs and whether the build is successful, failed, or in progress, allowing you to identify errors, failed codes, and slowdowns.
You can collaborate on temporary Slack channels dedicated to open Bitbucket pull requests. Only assignees and reviewer/s are invited automatically, keeping work organized and away from distractions.
You’ll have ephemeral Slack channels for each open merge request in GitLab. Any updates, test results, comments, etc., will be tracked. The only people invited are assignees and reviewers, ensuring your team stays focused and distraction-free.
Once a pull request is merged into the main branch, you’ll receive an automated message in a Broadcast channel with a link for viewing differences in the codebase.
A message is automatically posted in the channel whenever a merge request is committed to the default (main) branch, allowing you to see differences between your branches.
Conclusion
So, that’s how you can rule your tech stack in Slack.