Working at the Speed of Slack

Feb 08, 2023

Working at the Speed of Slack

Working at the Speed of Slack

Episode Notes/Resources:

In this episode of “Salesforce Simplified” we’re talking with Slack Senior Solutions Engineer Aditi Chaturvedi about the great features inside Slack, the messaging app for business.

Aditi Chaturvedi on LinkedIn:

http://bit.ly/3EM2efH

What You Need to Know About Slack

https://bit.ly/3eaFf4J

Transcription:

Announcer:
Thanks for stopping by. This is Salesforce Simplified, the podcast from Ad Victoriam Solutions.

Mike Boyle:
Hello everyone, I’m Mike Boyle from Ad Victoriam Solutions, and inside this episode of the Salesforce Simplified podcast we’re going to be talking with Slack Senior Solutions Engineer, Aditi Chaturvedi. And we’re going to talk to her about the great features that are inside Slack, which is the messaging app for business. Hello Aditi, welcome to the Salesforce Simplified podcast. How are you?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
Hi, Mike. I’m great, and I’m very happy to be here today with you.

Mike Boyle:
We’re thrilled that you are here. So before we take a peek inside this amazing business tool that Slack is, why don’t you tell us a little bit about Aditi, how long have you been at Slack, and what you do?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
So based in Brooklyn, New York. I’m a Solutions Engineer at Slack. Been here for a little over a year. Prior to that I was doing strategy and technology consulting. In one of my past lives, I was actually a Salesforce consultant, some familiarity back there. But yeah, at Slack, a solutions engineer is really the technical counterpart to the sales executive. So we are on the front lines helping our customers understand how to best use the product, how to realize the value that they want from their digital headquarters, and illustrate what’s possible, the art of the possible.

Mike Boyle:
It just sounds like a pretty darn cool job to me, that’s all. So for those who don’t know, Salesforce owns Slack. And they announced on July 21st, 2021 that they had completed their 27.7 billion dollar acquisition of Slack Technologies Incorporated. And back when that happened, Brett Taylor, who is, as we record this, going to be the outgoing Salesforce co CEO, said quote, “If you’re starting a company today, you start by planning your digital HQ. And that’s really what we want to bring to every company in the world. We want to help them build the digital infrastructure that lets them succeed in this new normal.” Aditi, how does Slack help to do that for companies?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
We’ll get deeper into that throughout this conversation, but just at a high-level, Slack is that all in one digital headquarters where people, tools, and processes can live. And I think importantly, it’s not just a place to replicate existing, maybe pre 2020, pre pandemic work patterns, but it’s actually a place where you can fundamentally reshape how work gets done both internally and externally.

Mike Boyle:
Well, obviously, and broadly, as you’ve kind of touched on here lightly, Slack’s core function is as a workplace communication tool. But when somebody comes up to you and says, “Hey, what do you do with Slack? And what is that?” How do you describe what Slack is?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
To me, Slack is the engagement layer where work happens. It’s where, as I said, your tools are interacting through integrations with the people that you work with, where you can automate processes using no-code workflows. It’s also a place to have a more direct human line to your external partners.

But then I think finally, and one of the bigger pieces for me is the way it acts as a culture carrier. And so what I mean by that is when I joined Slack a little over a year ago, I was immediately introduced by my manager in our social channels. Everyone reacted with fun emojis, all of my kind of BizTech requesting a phone, apps, things like that. All those to-dos were handled right within Slack. I had an onboarding channel set up for me with a subset of my team who were helping me onboard and get used to the company. And then we also utilize an app called Donut, which basically allows you to randomly be paired with somebody else in your team so that you can get to know them. And that really helped me quickly start reaching out to people and having kind of that human touch, especially because I did start during the pandemic and we weren’t going into the office as much. So I think that last piece, that culture piece is also a really important thing about Slack.

Mike Boyle:
Yeah. And I should mention that we here at Ad Victoriam Solutions use Slack and it’s just an amazing tool. And we’re going to find out a little bit more about how amazing it is here as we go along.
So let’s talk about what it means to be more connected in the way that you work using Slack. How does using Slack up the, being connected game, for businesses?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
We understand we’re in a bit of a different work environment now post 2020. Even though people are probably going to start coming back into the office a little bit more, I think this more flexible model where some people work remotely or at least are on distributed teams is here to stay. And I think what a lot of people found in 2020 is that email is not responsive or intelligent enough to meet that challenge. And we even find with some of our most mature customers, they talk about working at the speed of Slack, and just being less reliant in general on email to get work done just because everything is so much faster to get done in Slack.

And then that last part, again, as I mentioned, culture I think is huge within Slack. One downside to everyone going remote so quickly was something that really did suffer was culture. And so we see a lot of our customers bringing that into Slack and increasing the availability of that culture across the company regardless of if you’re remote, regardless of if you’re not in the headquarters or things like that, so thinking about ERG channels or fun channels. My favorite fun channel that the Slack solution engineers has is called #selfie. So it’s selfies. And the rule is you can only post selfies in there of all the solution engineers. So things like that, you really quickly start to get to know people and what they like to do.

Mike Boyle:
That’s kind of getting into my next question. Aditi… flexibility. How does Slack improve that for companies?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
One concept you’ll hear us talk about a lot is the concept of asynchronous versus synchronous work. So what can we do together in a synchronous manner, versus what kind of activities can we add more flexibility to and allow them to be asynchronous so that they work at the time that makes the most sense for that person. One thing I think we also felt coming out of 2020 is, and this is a little bit what I was talking about, how we don’t want to just replicate previous business processes and put those in Slack or put them in a digital space is, a lot of people experience Zoom fatigue throughout 2020. It just felt like everything became a meeting, everything became synchronous work, and you were just sitting on a Zoom call all day.

So this emphasis on, well, what activities can be pulled into asynchronous work is seen throughout all of the features that we have at Slack. So I’m thinking about things like audio and video clips. So instead of needing to get on a call with someone, you can just post a clip of yourself talking about your thoughts about an upcoming meeting, or even post an audio clip detailing your thoughts coming out of a customer in-person customer call or things like that.

I’m thinking about Huddles, which is our audio and video calling tool within Slack. It allows you to have calls that are less formal. So sometimes I find when you just want to quickly ask somebody a question, I think previously in our previous companies I worked at, we used to default to just automatically putting 30 minutes on someone’s calendar and having a Zoom meeting. And as we all know, when you have 30 minutes, you end up filling the 30 minutes, and then you’re just back to back to back on meetings. Huddles is that less formal sort of trying to replicate, oh, I was walking by somebody at the office and I wanted to quickly tap their shoulders. So I find that when I need to ask a question and I can use Huddles instead of a more formal Zoom call, I actually have five minute quick calls, get my answer and move on.

Mike Boyle:
We love Huddles.

Aditi Chaturvedi:
Yeah. Yes.

Mike Boyle:
Aditi, there’s also a stepped up inclusiveness component for Slack users. What are the benefits of that?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
So I’ve been talking about culture a lot, but we also find that a lot of our customers take this piece very seriously as well. And it’s often one of their goals of the year, part of their North Star for their company. And in general at Slack and what our culture stands for is creating a sense of belonging and being able to bring your most authentic self to work. I think the most obvious way we do this is through the use of how we have profiles set up. So you can call out what your pronouns are, what your interests are, where you live, things like that, right within your profile. So the first time someone’s maybe meeting you, they can quickly look you up, know a little bit about you beforehand.

And we actually have an advanced profile add-on. It’s called Atlas. And what’s nice about that is it has a variety of other fields and org chart capability that you can all have show up right directly within Slack. And one of the things I really liked about that, especially when I was onboarding, is it helped me very quickly understand where I was in the company and who I was talking to, how they’re related to me. It also told me when someone had started, so I knew if I was talking to a fellow newbie or if I was talking to someone more tenured. It let me have these more authentic conversations when I was first meeting people.

Mike Boyle:
One of the things that makes Slack different is that it allows internal employees to communicate not only across their enterprise in one single platform, but with vendors and customers as well. But that’s not all. Slack also allows all parties to retain the data related to those conversations, not just internal users. And my question is how much of a game changer has that been?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
I think it’s a big game changer. We talk a lot at Slack about the search-first mentality. And so where that comes from is, in general we recommend to our customers to as much as they can and where appropriate, default their channels to be public channels. And the reason behind that is because it allows for this massive wealth of institutional knowledge that your company is constantly adding to every day, every new message. It allows for that to become searchable. And that’s what we mean by that search first mentality.

So, as an example, when I am on a call with a customer and they’re asking me a specific question about maybe a provider I’m not very familiar with, I can quickly search in Slack and it will pull up channels I’m not involved in or not member of, but have important information for me about a specific topic. And I don’t have to go make sure I find someone from the partnerships team and direct message them, I can just find that information on my own. And I can also find the channels where I could post questions. And I don’t need to have a specific relationship with anybody to get information.

So, broadly creating that kind of a culture helps to reduce silos between teams, geographies, et cetera, and just allow again, that institutional knowledge to become more available and more actionable throughout the company.

Mike Boyle:
Aditi, I’m curious about the integration between Salesforce’s CRM Analytics, which is formally Tableau CRM, and Slack. Talk about how you can get your data to talk to you via Slack.

Aditi Chaturvedi:
I’m glad you brought it up because it’s one of the many Salesforce and Slack integrations that have recently been released and are going to be on the roadmap, and so it’s a very exciting time for Salesforce and Slack. But yeah, with the CRMA integration, I think in general with CRM Analytics, the idea is to put data at the center of every conversation and get insights into the flow of work. And we also know that Slack is where work happens and where conversations exist. So having conversations and contexts living in the same place just makes sense.

So, with that new integration from Slack, you can seamlessly find, share, and collaborate on Salesforce reports, dashboards, and CRM analytics items. So what I think is in practice, that would look something like sharing snapshots of reports and dashboards, and that can be internal or even external. So thinking about users who maybe don’t have those licenses but would benefit from seeing a snapshot of a report or dashboard, think about what a game changer it is to share that with a partner with a customer directly through Slack Connect and have conversation and discussion all around that.

And then I think to the point of talking to you, we can also subscribe to CRM analytics dashboards for periodic updates, or you can also import those notifications so you get notified, for example, when certain data thresholds are met. And you can always share those notifications and subscriptions with your teammates. So again, it’s just pulling conversation around the context or trigger, which is, in this case, the analytics we’re getting from CRMA into just this one engagement layer. So we don’t need to context switch between multiple tools.

Mike Boyle:
I know I don’t have to tell you this, but in the world that we live in today, security would be a big concern for any company considering a Slack integration. So can you talk a little bit about how Slack protects an organization’s data?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
Slack was built from the ground up to be the most secure way to communicate and collaborate not only within but across company boundaries. And protecting the security of our customers’ data is a top priority for Slack. High level, our program is based on the concept of defense in depth, which is all about securing our organization and our customer’s data at every layer. And that approach focuses on things like security governance, risk management, and compliance.

So, examples include we have encryption at rest and then transit, network security and server hardening, administrative access control, systems monitoring, logging, alerting, et cetera. And we also offer enterprise grade security across identity and device management, data protection, and information governments. And we just make sure that this is built into every aspect of our product and platform, all making sure, again, that we’re not sacrificing usability. And then for the customers who need additional control, visibility, and flexibility around security and data protection, we also offer a number of tools and features to provide that.

And I think just the final point, we’re often asked, how secure are we? What certifications do we have? So we adhere to GDPR CCPA, et cetera. And we also have plans and features that allow for HIPAA, FINRA, and Fedramp moderate compliance. So we really have a very flexible architecture to provide what our customers need, what’s unique for them. But at the base is this highly secure platform.

Mike Boyle:
You got it totally under control is what you’re saying…

So, using Slack and Salesforce APIs, companies can connect their must-have apps to Slack. Can you talk a little bit how large that app ecosystem is at this point?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
It is huge. There are over 2,600 apps in our app directory. And I think an important point about that is that all of those apps are managed by those third parties. And so when you pull in an app into Slack, you don’t have to worry about the maintenance of it, the management of it. But another nice thing about it is that those companies who are building those apps have a lot of incentive to maintain the app, keep it updated, make sure it’s highly usable, because they know that people are working in Slack all day and they want to make sure they have access to their tools.

And in general, I would say the philosophy why we have so many apps available and why we have such an app agnostic approach, is we really want our customers to create the tech stack that works best for them, but then let Slack be that productivity multiplier of their tech stack, and ensure they get the highest value, not just from Slack, but also from the tools that they interact with the most throughout the day.

Mike Boyle:
Obviously there is a mobile companion to Slack’s desktop interface. How closely are they tied in terms of their functionality?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
I would say very close. The mobile experience really aims to replicate the desktop experience as much as possible while still remaining simple and intuitive. And we find that a lot of people really enjoy using the mobile version of Slack. I especially think of people like sales reps or even field service workers who are out in the field. A lot of companies will find that if they were previously relying on WhatsApp or text messages, that those users end up adapting really quickly with Slack because the mobile interface of Slack has a very similar feel. So thinking about leaving a customer call or leaving an onsite appointment, being able to quickly update the call notes, either typing them out or as I mentioned before, maybe leaving an audio clip or a video clip. It’s just very seamless and easy with the mobile app.

Mike Boyle:
Last question I have for you is, can you talk a little bit about one or two of your favorite Slack features that may not be well known but should be?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
Sure. So we talked about Huddles. And I think when Huddles first released, people were like, well, when would I use this versus Zoom? But we’ve seen massive, massive adoption of Huddles. It’s one of our fastest growing products. And I find that there’s this feature of Huddles that not everyone knows about that I use often.
So in a huddle you can turn on captions and then again that that’s of course an accessibility thing. But what’s nice about it is it’s auto transcribing as everyone’s talking. And when you have the captions on, you can copy and paste important phrases or conversations, and paste that directly into the thread of the huddle. So now you have that available to you going forward. And so I use this whenever we have a sync right before a customer call or something, and my manager or sales rep explain something in a really clear, great manner, and I just want to keep track of that and make sure I have it somewhere. Rather than having to record it or anything like that, I can just copy and paste the captions, add it into the thread, and now we have that available and searchable in Slack.

Mike Boyle:
I love that. I’m going to go look for that right away, as soon as we’re done. I think that’s terrific.

I have one bonus question for you. As you know, Slack was launched as a public company back in 2013. And one of its founding members, Stewart Butterfield at the time said that Slack was an acronym standing for what, Aditi? Let’s test your knowledge here. Let’s put you on the spot.

Aditi Chaturvedi:
Yeah, I’ve definitely got to know this one. So, Slack stands for Searchable Log of All Conversations and Knowledge. And I think now that your listeners know the definition of it, I think that adds a lot of context and background to the conversation we’ve had so far about creating this repository of institutional knowledge that’s searchable, and easy to access, and enjoyable to use.

Mike Boyle:
So now everyone knows Slack stands for Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge. You passed the test Aditi, go to the head of the class now.

Aditi Chaturvedi:
Phew. Thanks.

Mike Boyle:
Hey listen, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about Slack. I am looking forward to actually having you back because just like everything Salesforce does, Slack also has all kinds of cool updates from time to time. So I’d love to have you come back and we can talk about how even more an amazing business tool Slack is. So, deal?

Aditi Chaturvedi:
Absolutely.

Mike Boyle:
Wonderful. Thank you Aditi.

And for the audience, if this is the first time you are listening to our podcast, I would be grateful if you would consider giving us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. People ask me sometimes, “Hey Mike, how do I do that?” Well in Apple podcast, you’ve got to go to the very bottom where they list all of our episodes to do that, and the same thing with Spotify. So if you would consider doing that, I would really, really appreciate it. You can also subscribe and follow the podcast wherever you get podcasts.

I’m Mike Boyle from Ad Victoriam Solutions. Thank you for listening to the Salesforce Simplified podcast. Our next episode is just around the corner.

Announcer:
We’re glad you stopped by. You’ve been listening to Salesforce Simplified the podcast from Ad Victoriam Solutions.

Working at the Speed of Slack

Episode Notes/Resources:

Transcription:

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