Slack Bot

A Slack Bot is an automated and intelligent program that can read questions from users and respond with answers that are either pre-programmed completely or assembled based on its programming.

With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, Slack Bots have become increasingly sophisticated and are capable of “assembling” answers through machine learning. This means lesser human interface is required to answer questions for both internal and external Slack bots.

A typical example of an internal slack bot is one used for internal communications within an organization by employees.

A typical example of an external slack bot is one that is customer or client facing where communication with external stakeholders can be eased using an auto-response bot.

As you might know, in the Slack chat platform, there already exists a bot which is capable of independent communication with individual Slack members. However, the functionality of this slack bot is limited to answering basic user questions (much like a Help Bot) and is not powered by Artificial Intelligence and incapable of machine learning.

However, what makes Slack great is the freedom of integrations - including the capability it gives to organizations to develop their own Slack Bots and integrate with their Slack account.

Once this customized and external Slack Bot is developed, organizations can use it for multiple purposes - both internal and external (by giving access to external stakeholders).

Before we discuss the different ways that you can creatively use your Slack Bot, lets run through some core functionalities that a well functioning Slack Bot must incorporate :

1. Slack Bot that’s not human - but must behave like oneIf you have ever used Slack’s own default Bot, or any other well functioning Bot, what becomes clear is their capacity to frame interactive and intuitive statements and answers. This is a critical aspect of any well developed Slack Bot where interactions with it “feels human”. This can be achieved well without even incorporating Artificial Intelligence, but this also means writing incredible answers to expected questions.
2. Slack Bot should be corrective - but politely This stems down from our previous point of the bot having the basic capacities for being “interactively human” in nature. This means, that the bot should also know how to deal with situations when the question asked itself is wrong. Being able to correct a person by giving options to select from as alternatives, not only inspires a polite interaction (yes, even with a bot), all the while accomplishing its primary objective : To help answer/solve a human question/problem, to keep the conversation going and finally, to reduce stress on human resource teams.
3. Mobile Readiness of the Slack Bot Any chat bot today, is by default, a mobile chat bot. Why? Because “chat” itself is increasingly mobile. Infact, mobile internet chats globally had already surpassed desktop powered internet chats since 2016.
4. Slack Bot Capable of StalkingThe core reason to create a Slack Bot , or any bot, is to reduce pressure on human resources. When this bot is applied on a webpage - like a Sales or Customer Support slack bots, the web hook integration should have the capacity to pop up on multiple web pages of the site (can also be all pages), such that the slack bot can continue conversing with the potential customer.
5. Finally - A Slack Bot deal closer!This is one of the most sought after capabilities of a Slack Bot, especially in support and sales teams - that the slack bot should be able to independently and intelligently drive the conversation towards a successful closure. Of course, “closure” is subjective depending on the organization’s objectives. For examples, a Sales Slack Bot may be capable of assisting an online buyer into successfully making a purchase.

Now that we have discussed the core functionalities that a good slack bot must incorporate, here are some of the applications of a slack bot in an organization :

Few of the survey types for employee satisfaction are:

• Sales Slack Bot A sales slack bot is an intelligent/semi-AI bot that is capable of undertaking complete or part of a sales process. This can be applied in any stage of the sales funnel. A sales slack bot is typically deployed during the lead nurturing process where a potential lead converses with the slack bot to gain formulated insights into products or services. Once a certain stage in the sales funnel is achieved and the lead is marked a qualified, it can be passed on for human sales closure though personal conversation. Advanced AI Sales Bots are fully capable of undertaking end-to-end sales closures with little or no direct human engagement.
• Support Slack Bot Much like the sales slack bot, the support slack bot is capable of undertaking customer support and technical support interactions. This too can be either partially deployed or can be end-to-end, depending on the maturity of the bot.
• Human Resource and Employee Assistance Slack BotHuman resource slack bots are designed to : 1. Onboard employees and help them navigate through basic organizational resources 2. Assist all employees with advanced organization resource management and file access.