The long-awaited AI update for Slack became available today. Slack AI should make it easier for employees to access information, making them smarter and better prepared going into their meetings. In addition, employees save a lot of time and are more productive.
Slack AI is the addition that many Slack users have been waiting for, especially in large organizations where users face daily activities in dozens of channels and long conversations. That’s where it really makes a difference.
Summaries of conversations
Slack AI offers an overview page that provides a brief summary of what happened in each channel. Based on that, employees can decide if they need more information about a specific conversation. One can open the channel, and Slack can generate a comprehensive summary of recent messages. If necessary, a time period can also be manually specified. For example, the last three or six months. Useful if someone is new to the organization or returning from an extended period of absence.
Slack AI provides more knowledge of one’s own organization
It sometimes happens that organizations have a broad product portfolio or that it is simply unclear which solution is best suited for which application. Some employees are afraid to ask these kinds of questions internally because others might think of it as common knowledge. Especially if you are new, asking questions to colleagues can be a barrier. Not anymore, because you can use Slack’s search function to ask these questions. Chances are the answers can be found in Slack, especially in Slack environments with marketing, PR and customer channels.
Slack AI can use and analyse specific business information to generate answers. As a result, employees are smarter and better informed about their own organization, whether it’s which product is suitable for which industry or which product is best suited in a humid environment right now, to name a few examples.
Better prepared to appointments
Employers expect employees to go into their meetings well-prepared. With larger customers, this can be a lot of information, which can be challenging. It is not just about what has been sold recently, but also the customer’s problems are essential. Or which conversations colleagues have had with or about this customer. In a simple process, all the information can be found in Salesforce Sales or Service Cloud. For project customers, there is often a separate Slack channel for that customer. There, too, using AI, all information can now be quickly summarized.
Also read: The world of Salesforce now revolves around Slack
Company data remains secret
It is essential to mention that Slack has all LLMs running internally. As a result, customer data is not shared with outside organizations. It also does not use customer data to train these models. Finally, Slack treats customer data as a silo, so other Slack customers never have access to your company data.
Slack AI makes Slack much better, but not yet for everyone
Slack AI is good news for organizations using Slack. Unfortunately, it is not for all organizations because although it is available as of today, for now, it is only available in English. In addition, it is only available as a paid extension to the Enterprise plan. Other languages and plans will be added in the near future. Hopefully, an affordable version for Slack Pro plans will also appear soon.