Modern businesses must choose from a myriad of software options. Although the software themselves have the potential to improve productivity, studying, choosing, and applying programs wastes time and lowers efficiency. Thus for many companies, the quest for higher productivity through technology is self-defeating.

Slack was designed to solve this problem. Operating as a single platform for employee communication, it integrates hundreds of different applications into the same screen. Rather than flip between multiple different tabs, employees can receive all the notifications they need in the same place. Although Slack is not yet compatible with all software, the number of apps that it can access increases every day. The most popular programs to use with Slack include:

Twitter

Social media savvy is the key to modern marketing, and few media are more important to gaining new customers than Twitter. Well-written tweets provide a quick, concise way to generate interest in your company. They only work, however, if you monitor them closely and quickly follow up with interested customers.

Slack allows you to quickly post tweets or access any particular Twitter channel, as well as to respond to customer inquiries. Slack integrations also allow you to quickly eliminate tweets that you decide reflect poorly on your company. You can thus stop bad publicity before it gets out of hand.

Whatever Twitter can offer to your business, Slack ensures that you will be able to take full advantage of it.

Your Guide To Twitter/Slack Integrations

WordPress

Whereas Twitter can spur new interest in your company, WordPress allows you to hold the attention of customers who are already interested.

WordPress is the ideal site to post in-depth articles on topics related to your company. The more articles you post, the more you will look like an expert in your industry. Customers will thus choose you over your competitors.

In the long run, you can use WordPress to cultivate a large number of consistent customers. This will ensure your company a reliable revenue stream.

As with Twitter, WordPress marketing is only effective if you monitor your posts and respond to comments and issues. If you integrate WordPress with Slack, all new WordPress posts will instantly be available to everyone from the same page. Your co-workers will always have a chance to read the articles and identify mistakes.

Slack also provides updates about comments on old blogs as well as reminding you when new blog posts are due. The sooner you install Slack, the easier it will be to design and implement a viable content marketing strategy.

Your Guide to WordPress/Slack Integrations

Stripe

Small businesses often lack the resources to set up payment processing departments. Thanks to Stripe, however, it is easier than ever for a business to adopt a reliable and efficient payment system.

Stripe handles all online payments in a professional manner, making sure that all services are paid for and that all revenues go to the right accounts. When you integrate Stripe with Slack, you will receive instant updates about:

• New charges
• Money transfers
• Subscriptions
• Invoice payments

You can also contact customers to resolve any questions they have about their payments, all from the convenience of a single screen.

Your Guide to Stripe/Slack Integrations

Help Scout

Created specifically to benefit startups and small businesses, Help Scout promotes quick communication between your customers and your Support staff.

Integrating Help Scout with Slack will cause all customer support questions to appear in the same hub. This reduces the time it takes to respond. Slack will inform your support staff whenever:

• A customer creates a new Help Scout conversation
• Someone updates or replies to an existing conversation
• A conversation is resolved and closed

Slack can also assign specific employees to specific types of Help Scout conversations. This ensures that no one is asked to help a customer who lacks the expertise to do so correctly.

If a support agent cannot answer a customer’s question, he or she can easily send it to other employees through Slack.

Your Guide to Help Scout/Slack Integrations

Desk.com

The desk is designed to maximize the speed of your customer support staff without compromising the quality of the support services your customers receive.

It integrates mobile support and a wide range of other productivity tools. This allows you to assist customers in whatever ways they need and from any location.

Slack makes customer service even more convenient by providing a single screen to monitor:

• Desk customer support requests
• Replies
• Updates

The software is easy to customize. You can tailor your support strategy to the specific needs of your customers and the abilities of your staff.

Desk allows you to assign different levels of priority to different customer support requests. This ensures that the most urgent questions will be dealt with first.

Your Guide to Desk.com/Slack Integrations

Trello

Created to help team members keep track of all their tasks during a collaboration, Trello is highly effective, but only when used for relatively small projects.

Large group projects involving several smaller teams usually contain too much information for any one team member to process. Using Trello runs the risk of flooding everyone on the team with updates.

By combining Trello with Slack, however, you can divide different types of information among different teams and individuals. This ensures that everyone involved in the project has exactly the information they need to contribute. The result is less confusion and higher productivity.

The benefits of Trello/Slack integrations will likely increase as Trello is developed further. At present, it is not possible to post new task cards to Trello through Slack. Current trends in Trello’s development, however, suggest that this will likely be possible in the near future. Integrating these two programs will thus open the door to further increases in productivity.

Your Guide to Trello/Slack Integrations

Blossom

Blossom helps software developers to monitor and manage team projects. It keeps track of all updates and developments. At any point in the development process, you can review the steps you’ve taken and recover the needed information.

By integrating this software with Slack, you ensure that all Blossom notifications will go to the same channel window. This lets you keep track of the project without wasting time switching between windows.

Whenever a new comment, project instruction card, or screenshot is posted, you will know immediately.

As with Trello, Slack allows you to control which updates go to whom, preventing anyone from having to sort through excessive amounts of information.

Your Guide to Blossom/Slack Integrations

Dropbox

Dropbox allows you and your colleagues to send links, documents, images, and other files to each other over the cloud. Anyone in your group can instantly download anything added to your Dropbox without delay or a paper trail.

As convenient as this system is, it becomes more difficult to use the more people are using it. Titles and links are often hard to interpret on their own. Since you don’t have time to open every document and check every link, you may end up missing an upload that’s relevant to you.

Slack solves this problem by analyzing new Dropbox items and producing a preview, which you may review before opening. You can thus quickly determine the relevance of each new Dropbox upload and respond accordingly.

Your Guide to Dropbox/Slack Integrations

HuBot

One of the most advanced chatterbots on the market, HuBot can be programmed to perform a wide range of features that help your business. The most popular uses for HuBot include:

• Research– You can instruct HuBot to pull up all recent articles on a subject, allowing you to access valuable information without wasting time searching for it.
• Planning– Through HuBot, you can send polls to your colleagues or customers, asking them where they want to meet, what they want to eat, and other questions to facilitate gathering.
• Alerts– You can program HuBot to inform your customers or your colleagues about any important new developments, as well as to give them any tools or information they need to respond.
• Games– If you and your colleagues need a break, HuBot provides quick games to entertain you without distracting you too much from work.
• Image Edits– HuBot can perform simple edits to pictures, allowing you to transform mundane images related to your company. This can be useful both for marketing purposes and as a way to keep your co-workers and employees entertained.

Slack integrations allow you to connect all of your team members to HuBot and benefit from these features instantly.

Your Guide to HuBot/Slack Integrations

Google+ Hangouts

Designed to allow three or more parties to converse from different locations, Google+ Hangouts reduces the cost of business conferences. This improves team communication for businesses whose employees must regularly be separated by great distances.

Integrating Google+ Hangouts with Slack allows you to effortlessly transition in and out of a Hangout. Simply type “/hangout” and a Hangouts window will open. This will also open a control panel that you can use to invite anyone else in your team to participate.

With Google+ Hangouts, holding a conference is as easy as striking up a conversation. This significantly increases business efficiency and convenience.

Besides holding conferences within your business, you can also use Google+ Hangouts/Slack integrations to communicate with other leaders in your industry. This facilitates partnerships and business-to-business collaborations, leading to more innovation in your field.

Your Guide to Google+ Hangouts/Slack Integrations

GitHub

As a database containing a wide range of source codes, GitHub lets you benefit from others’ knowledge for your software development projects as well as to contribute your own. Slack provides instant updates from GitHub, allowing you to quickly learn about:

• Wiki updates
• Deploy keys
• Changes in settings
• New codes
• Webhooks and other available services
• Other users’ reports of issues
• Distributed revision control features, such as pull requests

Slack integrations ensure that no new developments on GitHub will go unnoticed. Your business can thus quickly adopt productive coding changes and increase its profitability.

Your Guide to GitHub/Slack Integrations

MailChimp

As with Twitter posts, email marketing is most effective if you monitor it closely and quickly follow up with interested customers.

MailChimp is designed to keep track of any changes in your email marketing materials. By integrating MailChimp with Slack, you will receive:

• Instant updates when customers subscribe to your mailing lists
• Updates about customers who unsubscribe
• Analyses of the overall effectiveness of your email campaigns

Some businesses worry that monitoring all their email marketing campaigns will flood them with too much information to process. If this is the case, you can program Slack to only keep an eye on particular campaigns or particular types of changes.

Your Guide to MailChimp/Slack Integrations

Asana

Asana combines task management software with general conversation tools. This allows you to discuss, create, and update tasks in real time.

When combined with Slack, you can use Asana to send specific task updates only to relevant individuals. This ensures that everyone has enough information without flooding anyone with too much. You can also use Slack to:

• Post new tasks to Asana
• Revise and complete old tasks
• Post comments on past and current tasks
• Open up conversations to clarify confusion among team members

Besides allowing you to assign new tasks and projects, Asana and Slack keep detailed records of completed and abandoned tasks. You can quickly search through old projects and identify any information you need. This makes it easier to identify and correct the source of past mistakes.

Your Guide to Asana/Slack Integrations

Google Drive

Google Drive is a great way for your business to save space while creating, updating, and accessing multiple group documents.

With Google Drive, multiple employees can work on the same document at the same time. This promotes quicker and more effective collaboration.

Because most companies create multiple documents on Google Drive, it can be difficult and time-consuming to keep up with all changes to relevant files. Slack provides a central hub for all Google Drive changes.

Whenever a new document is uploaded, a new link is posted or a new sentence is added, everyone who works on the drive will know immediately. Employees can thus quickly make use of new information. This leads to higher long-term productivity.

You can also use Google Drive to provide quick summaries of new information. This ensures that each team member will know whether an update is relevant to them and how they can use it if so.

Your Guide to Google Drive/Slack Integrations

Groove

Much of modern customer support is now carried out over email. This creates a digital paper trail that customers can keep track of, but it also limits customer support agents. Email accounts often lack the tools and applications for optimal customer support.

Groove undercuts this problem by offering all of the latest applications to the customer support agent. Customers still receive support updates as emails, but support agents send them with a wider array of resources than an email account provides.

Slack further improves this efficiency by giving customer support agents real-time updates on:

• New support tickets
• Ticket notes
• Customer and agent replies.

Slack can also designate different types of Groove support tickets to different employees. This ensures that customers are instantly connected to the representatives they need.

Your Guide to Groove/Slack Integrations

Zendesk

Zendesk distinguishes itself as a customer support program through its reliance on data.

Zendesk isn’t limited to resolving customer questions and problems. By keeping track of the most common types of user problems, it gives you the information to improve your business and increase long-term customer satisfaction.

Customer data is useful but can be hard to keep track of. Slack provides you with a convenient platform to display all customer support metrics.

Slack integrations also allow you to monitor Zendesk customer support tickets. It informs you whenever:

• Someone opens a ticket
• A ticket is pending a response
• A ticket is resolved
• A ticket closes down

You can also pull up past data while resolving a ticket and use it to improve your customer support in real time.

Your Guide to Zendesk/Slack Integrations

Intercom

If you’re serious about helping customers to use your software correctly, you have to go beyond customer support.

Intercom keeps track of what current or prospective customers do with your software. It sends you updates whenever someone does not appear to be using it correctly.

You can use Intercom to send general emails or specific messages to customers, asking them for feedback and suggesting ways they can use your programs more effectively.

Intercom helps your customers to feel valued. It also prevents confusion, reducing the change that they will go to another company.

Slack allows you to monitor new Intercom users, receive notifications, send messages, and read replies all from the same screen. This ensures that you will never miss an opportunity to optimize your customers’ experiences.

Your Guide to Intercom/Slack Integrations

Zapier

Most Slack integrations open up one new option for your business. Integrating Slack with Zapier opens up hundreds.

Zapier is designed to automate your apps. It instructs them to perform particular functions with minimal input from you or your employees.

Using Zapier saves you from the inconvenience of having to program repetitive functions for your apps. It is particularly ideal if none of your employees or co-workers have much experience writing code.

Combining Zapier with Slack allows you to manage all app functions from a single screen. Both programs are compatible with a wide range of apps, including:

• Google Sheets
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Wufoo
• YouTube
• Tumblr

By installing the two programs, you will never have to worry about your apps failing to perform as intended.

Your Guide to Zapier/Slack Integrations

Honeybadger

Zapier will streamline your business if you don’t have programmers on staff. Honeybadger will streamline it if you do.

If your business has programmers to create new apps, the last thing they want to be doing is spending their time debugging each new program. The more quickly you can identify and eliminate bugs, the more time you can spend doing productive work.

Honeybadger keeps track of all apps that you or your co-worker’s design It alerts you to any outages, exceptions, or other problems that indicate a bug.

Honeybadger provides the most specific information possible. This allows programmers to solve problems as soon as they come up.

By integrating Honeybadger with Slack, you can ensure that all app alerts come to the same screen and are assigned to the appropriate specialist.

Your Guide to Honeybadger/Slack Integrations

Bonus

Bonus promotes and expands the benefits of giving employees bonuses for good work. Not only does it make it easier for executives and owners to assign bonuses, but it also gives employees the option of offering each other “microbuses.”

If one employee helps another out during a project or presentation, the other employee can send her a small monetary reward. This gives employees an incentive to help each other. It also promotes greater team communication and collaboration and helps everyone to feel valued and accepted by their peers.

Slack integrations add to Bonus the benefits of public recognition. When an employee assigns a bonus to someone else, it becomes available on a public screen. This informs all the employees that one of their peers has done well.

The bonus also allows employees to publicize their reasons for giving each other bonuses. This helps others to understand what they have to do to get bonuses themselves.

Your Guide to Bonus/Slack Integrations

Future Forays

As convenient as Slack is already, it is only in its infancy. The more businesses that adopt Slack for employee communication, the more incentive software developers will have to make their products compatible with it. Slack in turn constantly seeks new ways to improve its integrations, allowing you to access more features for each program from the same convenient screen. By adopting Slack, you ensure a steady source of productivity increases for your company.

Whenever a product becomes compatible with Slack, we post an update on our Twitter page. For more information or to begin using Slack for free, visit our website today.

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The post 20 Slack Integrations to Amp up Your Team Communication appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.