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Communication

How to Make the Most of Your Slack Community

Paulina
Content Writer
September 15, 2024

Slack's popularity has soared in recent years, thanks to its versatile and personalized features. This has led to an impressive user base of 18 million, making it one of the most widely used communication platforms.

Slack is a fantastic tool for marketing and sales teams because of its many extra features, real-time notifications, external Slack Connect channels, and communities. That said, handling thriving Slack communities can require a lot of hard work and imagination.

In our article, we'll explore why it's important to use Slack communities and how to follow the best steps for great success.

Benefits of Slack Communities 

Creating a Shared Knowledge Base 

Due to its nature, Slack is an excellent platform for creating a collaborative environment where users can quickly access relevant content and get answers to their questions. 

With its diverse array of features, ranging from robust search functions to seamless file sharing, the tool stands out as an exceptional knowledge resource. Leveraging Slack communities, individuals, whether they are customers or employees, can effortlessly retrieve information that would otherwise be challenging to locate, all at the simple click of a button.

Ramping up Engagement

A well-oiled Slack community can foster a sense of belonging that is difficult to create in a hybrid environment. When your only point of contact with your customers is often through a digital screen, platforms like Slack offer you a chance to create a bespoke environment.

Through Slack workspaces users can feel encouraged to interact and build valuable relationships, ultimately leading to higher net retention rates.

Make engaging visual assets to grab your audience's interest or use polls to understand what your community thinks. Then, change things based on their feedback to make a place where your customers feel important.

Instant Connection with Millions of People

With nearly 80% of Fortune 100 companies using Slack, organizations can connect with millions of users without forcing them to change their regular communication channels. 

In fact, chances are, many of your customers already use Slack. So, why not connect with them on the platform they happily use most for work?

Using Slack communities, you can grab your audience's full attention without bothersome pop-ups or spam. This allows you to share straightforward messages that thousands of people can instantly relate to.

Best Practices for Slack Communities

Clean Up the Mess

First things first, keep a close eye on your customer-facing channels and Slack communities. This will help ensure that important messages aren't lost and your customers aren't bothered by spam. Pin crucial information in Slack channels, establish clear communication guidelines for newcomers, and archive unused channels.

Moreover, regular Slack community audits can help you create a truly engaging platform to connect with your employees or customers and make the most of this platform.

Integrate to Achieve Maximum Functionality

Even the best-built tools can't serve all your needs. But there's a solution to that! 

With the help of Slack apps, companies can personalize their Slack communities to suit their exact needs. With over 2400+ available integrations, Slack can provide a solution to all your needs from video calls to project management and conversational ticketing without leaving the platform.

Plus, with Slack apps such as Thena, you can turn your Slack community into your customer service triage center, resolving all your clients’ needs with a straightforward and efficient process.

Create Clear Channel Structures

The cornerstone of a thriving Slack community is a clear channel structure. Make sure you dedicate channels to functions or specific topics (i.e. #customer_enquiries or #IT_help desk) that can gather all information linked to them. Create a free space for casual chat (such as #general or #conversations), so your users don't clog your specific channels with small talk.

Create an open conversation with your users to see what channels they would find useful to build an effective flow of communication. Ensure that channel guidelines are part of your onboarding and that the code of conduct is enforced through service members.

How Thena Can Optimize Your Slack Communities

Running a Slack community can be hard, even for organized organizations. These communities can have lots of people chatting all the time, which is good, but keeping up with all the messages can be tough.

Thena has lots of tools that help businesses make the most of their Slack communities without any trouble.

Never Lose a Customer Request Again

Thena can automatically detect customer requests that pop up in the public channels of Slack communities, routing these requests automatically to ticketing platforms such as Zendesk or Jira and filtering them based on unique requirements.

Service teams can also receive instant notifications through triage channels, alerting them to new requests and even providing access to a handy Kanba

Effectively Prioritize Important Messages

Furthermore, with the help of Thena's automation, organizations can build and segment messages effectively to cater to the specific needs of unique user groups. Using artificial intelligence, Thena can create order amongst hundreds or thousands of messages, clearly marking which requests should be actioned first.

With intelligent SLA notifications, customer service members can be notified when a request has yet to be responded to within SLA timelines to ensure that your customers are left satisfied.

Create Targeted Content

Lastly, utilizing Thena's pre-built templates, marketing, and sales teams can create various powerful content, from newsletters to product updates, collaborating on drafts without having to leave Slack.

Thena provides a variety of useful functionalities and templates to create effective marketing campaigns and share them on Slack. You can segment your messaging based on a range of specifications from audience type to geographic locations. 

Related Read: How to Use Slack for Marketing

Once your marketing campaign is ready to launch, Thena can even help you track performance metrics to create the most effective campaign.

Conclusion

An effective Slack community can bring your business a wide range of benefits, from increased customer engagement to better service times. With the help of tools like Thena, you can bring out the most value in your Slack community.

Let us help you discover the next generation of customer service. 

Customers first, growth always.
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