Top 7 benefits of Slack & Salesforce integration

Salesforce and Slack are two leaders in their fields: Salesforce is a top CRM service provider; Slack is a communication platform popular through large and small teams around the globe (43% of Fortune 100 businesses pay to use Slack). Since 2021 Slack and Salesforce have been integrated. Let’s have a closer look at what benefits such an integration brings.

Does Slack belong to Salesforce?

Yep. Slack, which was founded in 2010 by Mr. Butterfield, previously rejected takeover offers from the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. But at the end of 2020, Salesforce said that it would buy the workplace software company Slack for $27.7 billion in cash and stock. And in less than a year, Salesforce announced it had completed its acquisition of Slack Technologies, Inc. Slack became the largest acquisition in Salesforce's 21-year history. Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, called the deal "a match made in heaven." "My eyes lit up," he said. Mr. Benioff marveled at the possibilities of combining the two companies' tools.

The pandemic has fundamentally changed consumer behavior and the way people work. When companies shifted their employees to remote locations, they needed new ways to communicate. Slack, an already popular option, suddenly became a primary way people collaborate on projects and even socialize. Buying Slack helps Salesforce's customers make the digital transformation. Salesforce has had its own communication and collaboration product, called Chatter, since 2010, but Chatter has had "limited traction."

"But if Slack was at the height of popularity, why, though, did it agree to be sold?" - you may ask. That is a brilliant question! Slack really has been doing great on its own. But due to the forced trend of remote work, such huge companies as Microsoft were trying to catch the wave and develop Slack alternatives (Microsoft Teams, by the way, became a top competitor of Slack; there even was a trial, but that's another story). A buyer like Salesforce invests in Slack resources to build out its software faster and take on competitors.

Don't forget to check out: What Slack and Salesforce Sales Cloud Could Do for Your Business

Slack & Salesforce Integration Benefits

Devoted Slack users used to be afraid that Salesforce would change Slack beyond recognition and make it some sort of "Salesforce Chat" or "Chatter 2.0". But luckily, it didn't happen. We still have our Party Parrot, but also, with Slack & Salesforce integration, we now can:

Attach Slack Messages to Salesforce Records;
From the Slack platform, users may create and edit Salesforce objects;
View and edit Salesforce records and dashboards from Slack;
Spend less time on account management.

Top benefits of integrating Slack with Salesforce are:

Simplified communication network

After Salesforce and Slack are integrated, users have the ability to get the same notifications on both platforms. This means that users will see notifications about Slack messages in Salesforce and notifications about Salesforce events that occurred in Slack. Now you can be sure that your sales, support, or marketing team members won't miss any urgent information from their colleagues while working on another platform.

Simple work with Salesforce objects from Slack

As you know, there are six standard objects in Salesforce: Accounts, Opportunities, Leads, Contacts, Cases, and Tasks. Since Salesforce and Slack work together, you have a useful feature: search from Slack. This feature allows you to view records from mentioned objects directly from Slack. To do such a search, you should follow the next syntax: /: Salesforce [search term], where the search term is one of the standard objects.

File sharing through both platforms

You can easily share Salesforce documents with prospects, information about managing clients, etc., via Slack. All you need to do to share documents is label team members in Slack, and they will get access to the required information.

Make quick notes about particular records

As we mentioned before, such integration allows you to attach Slack messages directly to Salesforce records. Did you have to take countless notes in your diary or on some third platform? And then forgot about some of them or was confused due to incomprehensible words abbreviations, expressions, names, and terms? Valuable actions might not be done in time, though. Slack Message Viewer is now at your service. Also, after you add a Slack message to the Salesforce record, it becomes visible to your colleagues, and everybody will be able to see valuable notes.

Do first things first

Now you can receive notifications about nearing tasks directly on the Slack platform. Managing you will receive notifications of their Salesforce next measures and assignments not leaving the Slack application. Prioritize the tasks and make sure none of them is missed!

Slack helps in Quote management

When the quote is on review, employees used to wait so long to find out the final result: denied or accepted. Set up an alert for quote approvals, and get notifications on the Slack platform. Moreover, you are now able to respond to such alerts and amend Salesforce records.

Check out another amazing blog by Sparkybit here: Salesforce Dynamic Forms: Overview, Benefits, Business Cases

Enhance customer satisfaction ratio

As a consequence of all the above - Salesforce and Slack integration simplifies communication inside the organization, which impacts communication outside. All data about customers is generally accessible, which leads to reduced response time. With Salesforce Slack integration, we can manage leads, keep track of timelines, and observe sales operations.

What Else? ChatGPT for Slack

On March 7th, 2023, Salesforce and OpenAI introduced the ChatGPT app for Slack. Salesforce highlights the following benefits of the new AI-powered app:

Conversation summarization lets users catch up on what's happening in channels faster. No need to read a huge stream of messages to be aware.
AI-powered writing assistance will now help users to write messages much faster and more accurately.
Instantly find answers with AI-powered research tools.

"Built by OpenAI on the Slack platform, the app integrates ChatGPT's powerful AI technology to deliver instant conversation summaries, research tools, and writing assistance directly in Slack to help millions of companies work more productively" - Salesforce News & Insights.

The ChatGPT app for Slack is currently in beta.

Conclusion

Slack, a companies' messaging platform, in 2021 was taken over by Salesforce, a world's prominent CRM software provider. Although Slack remains an independent and open platform, such integration brings a lot of benefits to Salesforce CRM users. Salesforce and Slack integration simplifies communication networks, help prioritize tasks, make notes in Salesforce records directly from Slack, and much more. Now, in 2023, Slack enhance doesn't stay still: an AI-powered application that is supposed to make Slack keep up with the rapid development of AI is now available in beta.

Sparkybit, Salesforce consulting and development company. We make Salesforce perform at its best by fitting it to Clients’ custom business needs. 9 years of sharpened expertise, 25+ successful long-term projects globally.