10 things I love about using Slack that made a big difference to me

1. No sorting of Emails into Folders

It might be a bit old school, but I was used to create folders in my inbox and sort my Emails away. A folder for every customer, every project, every event, every team member, for announcements, product news, trainings and so on. And don’t get me started about subfolders. With Slack everything comes in channels and stays in channels - no sorting, no management of folder structures. How I stay on top of things? @-mentions and starred channels get my immediate attention, the rest can wait until I have time.

2. Channels provide context

When I joined Slack, I started with an empty inbox. And it stayed pretty much that way. Everything had a Slack channel - my key customers, key projects, success stories, product presentations, announcements. I didn’t have to run around and ask people to forward me stuff in Email (and to rely that they actually do it). But the biggest game changer: emails are static, email trails are often incomplete. Channels provide you the full context because you see the entire flow of the discussion.

3. Finding, not searching

Slack search is extremely powerful and allows efficient search with many parameters - not only in channels that I am a member of, but across all channels. Also even in content that was created before i joined the company, a department, a specific role or project. That doesn’t mean that I can access everything - there are private channels and access rights to documents etc in Slack. But I know who the owner is and can easily ask for permission to access… of course in Slack. 

4. Far less loops and iterations:

There is no cc/bcc, either you are in a channel or not. There are no late out-of-context email responses that set you and the entire team 2 steps back, no surprising inputs from people that have been dropped off the distribution list or have been bcc’ed. When people join a channel, history/context are available in a channel, and the flow of the discussion is clear - they can contribute at the right place, meaning there are far less iterations, loops and setbacks from inefficient communication.

5. Less Power Plays and Politics

Closely related to #4: the fact that history/context and discussions are visible in a channel, there is far less political behavior. No bcc, no playing around with sharing different and or partial information, far less “cover your rear end” messages etc. 

6. Crisper communication styles:

Communication in Slack appears much crisper. I attribute it to 2 factors: (1) it is not Email, we are used to keeping us short & crisp from Whatsapp and other messengers. Shortness drives focus and structure. (2) I believe channel visibility also makes people pay some more attention to their style and structure. And if they don’t, then the messenger style leads to much faster clarification.

7. Emojis - more than funny gimmicks

Ever got these birthday messages full of emojis of cake, champagne, fireworks & Co? Until I joined Slack, I could hardly imagine a much broader use in business. Now I often respond in Emojis (which spares me and my colleagues plenty of emails in my abandoned inbox) - some of my favorites:

8. Integrations with other systems

Slack has over 2000 standard integrations with almost all the big tools. Here are some of my favorites:

• I fell immediately in love with the Salesforce-Integration. If someone makes an update in SFDC, e.g. meeting minutes or next steps, it gets posted in the respective channel for this customer. The other way round, I can also access information in salesforce directly from Slack, e.g. to check who is the assigned account or customer success manager.
• There are systems that I have to access not too frequently but regularly - e.g. Workday to take PTO or to approve it for my team, Concur to approve expense reports from my team etc. All of that I do now in Slack - thanks to the standard integrations
• I used to get a lot of email notifications from systems that something happened there, e.g. a task was added in Asana, something was changed in Trello, another thing has been created in Jira - you name it. All these things happen now in my world in Slack, right in the channels where they belong. 

9. Bots have my back:

I have to admit that I underestimated how much easier your life can be with bots… also here are my 2 absolute favorites:

• Slackbot: for me it is “the good sole” of Slack - it asks me if i want to leave channels that I haven’t used them for a longer period, it reminds me of tasks and deadlines. I can ask it who has to approve certain terms for that one deal that absolutely needs to come in this quarter… 
• Troops.ai: the super charger for sales. It reminds me of pending approvals in SFDC, not updated opportunities etc.

10. Workflow Builder

Do you dislike simple repetitive tasks or bridging system breaks manually as much as me? Slack recently launched its workflow builder which allows anybody to build his or her own workflows, and the more I use it, the more I love it.