Slack based community

Rich Rans

I've only seen this done a couple times, so wanted to see other's experiences with a Slack based community. Any input would be helpful, but some specific prompts:

• What plays have you had success with in driving engagement? Ask me anything, specific channels, etc...
• How much do customers interact with each other, and how much is it directed at the vendor?
• How has it played with support? Do you end up with support questions in Slack? Are customers messaging Support/CSM/Product directly?
• How soon do you need a premium or a supporting add-on technology?

Ultimately we'd probably want to grow to a web based community (like GGR) but would likely build from Slack.

Brian O'Keeffe

It was proposed to me to do this. So far I have resisted. How do you categorize? Track engagements? It becomes one giant mess. I love how it meets customers where they are and can see a slack feed as an addendum to the community, but not a replacement.

PiperWilson

Slack is not intended to be a community platform, even though many organizations use it that way with varying degrees of success. In my observations, Slack can be successful because, as @Brian O'Keeffe says, you are meeting your members where they are.

Problems arise around data. I don't work with Slack communities, but it's my understanding that what you get natively isn't as helpful as most desire which means you need to pay for a tool.

Another issue you'll face is that your content isn't evergreen. Conversation history disappears after 90 days on most plans, and people aren't prone to searching Slack for answers.

Finally, no matter how transparent you are about the transition's when, where, and why, be aware that you'll lose some members when you transition away from Slack to a platform. Don't lose heart; you'll gain others.

Chad Horenfeldt

Hi Rich - we started our community in Slack as a proof of concept and it worked well. The challenges had more to do with keeping customers engaged. There are no easy ways to bring people back to the community. 

We did find that people did engage and has been said, it’s something people are familiar with. 

The downside was that it didn’t integrate with other systems and there is very little reporting. Once we did the POC, we could demonstrate that a community was helpful but would require dedicated resources. We then moved to Insided. 

Rich Rans

Thanks for the feedback.

Its obviously has limitations, especially versus community software platforms (which I used to sell and support so am well familiar with that).

My main goal is to just get customers talking. Which we've been very limited in generating that engagement.

Chad Horenfeldt

Re Engagement - what drew people to our Slack community was dropping information there first:

-Product updates

-New features being developed

-Call for beta testers etc...

We were also easily accessible. I responded to customers that DM'd me. It created a nice bond.

Community members felt like Insiders