When you find the right tools to support your business, and your clients, your efficiencies increase and you find reaching stretch goals not only possible but happening! Tech tools are incredible performance boosters – particularly for small business, and especially now when subcontracted and work-from-home teams are the norm. With your team split up physically it can cause a communication breakdown that could slow productivity and scuff your customer service delivery.
Slack might be the missing piece to your productivity puzzle. This online platform connects your team wherever they are in the world on whatever project they’re working on and, best of all, you can customize the entire experience to flow the way you want. Good chance you’ll be able to integrate tools you’re already using into slack, too. We know what you’re thinking, ‘Sounds too good to be true’, but we use it so this is no joke!
Slack is compartmentalized into channels and direct messages which is really just new school terms for chatrooms. Individual users have to be given permission to use each space, so you can limit how many cooks are in the kitchen and not bother the administrative team with your designers’ redesign conversation. If you’re a smaller team where everyone wears a bunch of hats you can let everyone run wild. One tool 
to rule them all, but easily scalable to your company – or even project’s – unique needs.
Oh the best part of slack? It eliminates inter-team email! On slack you can upload files, set desktop notifications to alert you when someone is trying to get your attention (and turn those off when you’re in the zone), and make plans for lunch. And because the whole thing is searchable you’ll never lose a conversation. You may still need company email to communicate with outside parties such as clients and suppliers, but slack will considerably reduce the clutter in your inbox. If you’re on the go quite often, no problem, slack goes with you on your mobile device of choice!
Remember that part about “may” still needing email to customer service? Maybe not! External apps that you can integrate with your slack interface are numerous, but popular choices includes Zendesk, a customer service tool which may allow you to eliminate email altogether. Other popular apps available to use with slack run the gamut of needs and include Trello, Google Drive, Twitter, Dropbox, and Skype. Track time, revise designs, tend to HR, socialize, get feedback all on slack. Your use of apps will depend on your budget, but that also means you can customize your bill to suit your budget.
Label channels in whatever manner works for you. We find that it works best for us if our categories reflect our services, but multi-person projects sometimes get their own slack channel just so that we don’t distract the entire team with our chit chat. We may have also programmed the slackbot to greet us warmly, and tell us to get back to work every time someone types “LOL”.
Once you’ve increased efficiencies with slack and noticed a higher capacity for productivity, it’s time to bring in more work. Call Jelly Triangle at 519-624-8888 for your free meeting to find out how we can help your brand get seen!
