The Era of Slack Bots: Connecting the SaaS Ecosystem
Slack makes work more enjoyable. It’s beautiful. Intuitive. Extremely easy to use. And, about to interconnect the SaaS ecosystem & define the future of work. Slack isn’t only a messaging app?—?it’s a command centre for interacting with nearly anything: services, building experiences through conversations between you and your customers, a search engine to request information, or share, mix, and save intel to relevant channels, and a medium that can provide the foundation for broad A.I. adoption. Slack Bots are personified software?—?A medium between technology & humans.
Slack bots are the ultimate interface to enable human-like interactions that will fundamentally change the experience between people & software.
The potential of Slack Bots is huge. So, there’s no surprise that Slack has launched an $80M investment fund for its Bot Platform. Why and how will Slack have an impact on the future of business? Here are 8 predictions for the coming era of Slack Bots & how they will connect the SaaS ecosystem.
- Slack as a Business Operating System - Connect & interface with all of your SaaS services in one application.
- A Foundation for Broad A.I. Adoption - As A.I. is added to SaaS services as the next wave of startups, Slack Bots will provide the front end for user experiences. The combination of Slack's rapid growth & rise of Slack Bots will ultimately drive organic adoption with users barely realizing.
- The Rise of Conversational Marketing - The messaging experience on Slack combined with the ability to create private or public channels to join makes Slack an optimal platform for scaling conversations with customers at scale.
- Automation through Invisible Apps - They'll run in the background. Listen. Be there when you need them. And, and provide updates from all your SaaS services in one place - all running behind the scenes.
- Slack Era of the Conversational Workplace - You once needed to be technical to connect services, automate software, or communicate with machines. The messaging experience of Slack will enable anyone now to converse with machines & software in meaningful ways.
- Continuous Micro Learning - Slack Bots will bring learning bots to your Slack command centre with invisible apps that can listen, learn, and recommend. Bite sized learning where you spend your time.
- Channels & Micro Communities - You don’t have to adopt a new platform, create a new login somewhere, or remember to visit a site to continue a conversation. This will be one of the most powerful ways to engage with advocates, your customers, and everyone else.
- "There's a Bot for That" - Because "There's an App for That" is old-school. We'll have the same proliferation of Bots as we experienced with Apple's app experience.
Welcome to the Bot Era. A world where invisible apps connect experiences between humans, computers, and artificial intelligence through natural language & communication. Just like the App store, you'll likely have a Bot for almost anything you need...
Continue reading on Medium - 8 Predictions on the Future of Software Experience w/ Slack Bots - for more detailed explanations on each prediction.
If you enjoy reading about the future of work, check out my other article on how "People are the Next Big App" and "MOOCs as a Marketing Medium"
Nice post, Alex. We are definitely bullish on the future with Slack. I agree with the point that a lot of apps will be able to provide a lot of value to users while leveraging Slack as the front-end interface with their application. With our latest app, Relay (https://relay.knowtify.io), we are experimenting with just that. After an initial set-up, our users won't need to use our front-end. They will interface with us almost exclusively via Slack. I still think there is a lot of room to improve how Slack users interface with these bots...but it's all coming. Exciting to see the emergence of major platforms...