Salesforce Reveals Its Plans for Slack Integration

Salesforce today revealed its plans for incorporating technology it gained during its acquisition of Slack for nearly $28 billion last December

The CRM giant will combine Slack with Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Tableau with the goal of creating a digital platform to help everyone get back to growth in today's work-from-anywhere world.

Salesforce's ultimate vision is for Slack-First Customer 360, a single platform for connecting employees, customers, and partners with the apps and workflows they need to get work done.

"Salesforce and Slack are creating the digital HQ to help every company get back to growth in today's digital-first, work-anywhere world," said Bret Taylor, president and chief operating officer of Salesforce, in a statement. "This is just the beginning for the Slack-First Customer 360, which will fundamentally reshape how work gets done by connecting employees, customers, and partners and the apps they use on a single platform."

Salesforce further hopes that with these pre-built integrations, companies will be able to collaborate in channels that unite teams and streamline workflows built around CRM data, giving them a single source of truth for their businesses and a single, shared view of their customers. Business processes can be automated in Slack, and with Slack Connect, companies can now work securely with external partners, vendors, and customers.

Salesforce Sales Cloud and Slack will help sales reps collaborate on deals in real time and drive growth from anywhere. Sales reps using Slack reportedly see an average of 15 percent faster sales cycles. The new capabilities provide deeper visibility into account details in Sales Cloud and connect the right people to close deals fast, all in Slack as the system of engagement. Digital deal rooms allow sales teams to securely collaborate around a customer or deal cycle in Slack. Sales reps can access and update Salesforce records and meeting information right from Slack. With files, conversations, and data in one place, teams can prepare for meetings, new reps can onboard by accessing account details in Slack, and external partners and customers can join in directly to close deals. ;Automated daily briefs in Slack provide a personalized daily list of tasks, meetings, and priority deals.

Through Salesforce Service Cloud and Slack, customer service teams can collaborate to provide real-time support, bringing customers directly into the channel when necessary. Service agents get instant access to relevant Service Cloud case data, experts and channels in Slack, Swarming creates a Slack channel for service teams to collaborate on complex and high-priority cases, bringing in the right employees and external partners to solve problems. Expert Finder automatically identifies the right experts to add to a swarm channel based on availability, capacity, and skills.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Slack give marketing teams and agency partners a shared digital workspace to collaborate on customer journeys and get insights. Intelligent, AI-driven insights from Marketing Cloud and Datorama, such as engagement being lower than expected, are shared directly in Slack, while workflow notifications automatically update Slack channels when changes to a marketing journey (i.e. a new email headline) are made, letting teams review, collaborate on, and approve changes instantly.

And Tableau and Slack expand the visibility of analytics across the organization to stay on top of data from anywhere and access data-driven Tableau insights in Slack. Automated notifications in Slack help users stay connected to Tableau data, such as when a sales pipeline dips below a specified threshold Watchlist digests provide a daily update on selected metrics and trends, while Subscriptions automate dashboard updates in team channels.

The decisions made by Salesforce are already drawing enthusiasm from some Salesforce and Slack users.

"The hybrid workplace requires the right digital tools to keep customers and employees connected, productive, and engaged," said Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM, in a statement. "The combined power of Salesforce and Slack is helping IBM deliver more value across every customer and employee interaction."

"In our rapid shift to an all-digital world, we learned we must be more connected, productive, and innovative to best reach and serve customers no matter where they are," said Patrick Spence, CEO of Sonos, in a statement. "The one-two punch of Salesforce and Slack has been crucial for collaboration between distributed teams, ultimately helping us achieve unprecedented growth during challenging times."

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