Slack, one of the world’s best-known collaboration apps and unicorn startups, has always said that its ease of use is one of the biggest reasons for its success. As a competitor to solutions like Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex Teams, Slack has to work hard to stand out in today’s collaboration-tool-rich environment. Currently, the company is hoping that its simplicity as an easy-to-deploy and use app for companies of all sizes will help it to maintain an all-important edge.
To ensure that anyone can make the most of the Slack experience, the collaboration team recently announced the arrival of their new web-based classroom. The Slack 101 tool will teach people new to the collaboration app marketplace how to get the best results out of their Slack too. The solution goes beyond the standard tutorials that you can already find within the app. Additionally, the classroom uses tips, videos, walkthroughs, and more to turn newbies into experts in no time.
Making It Easier to Access Slack
According to the Vice President of customer experience for Slack, Ali Rayl, the Slack brand wants to show customers that its here for them and ready to offer support wherever they can. Slack believes in empowering its users with innovative tools and unique experiences, wherever they might be. Rayl noted that the ideal audience for the new Slack classroom will be the people who have never had a chance to use a collaboration tool in the past.
Although there are many customers out there that come to Slack having used other apps like Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex Teams, there are still people out there who have never used a similar chat-based app for enterprise collaboration before. The Slack 101 digital platform is intended to make companies feel comfortable using an app like Slack to get work done and remain as productive as possible.
With Slack 101, the collaboration company hopes to ease adoption for businesses that are bringing collaborative technology into the enterprise for the first time. Within the web-based classroom, users will learn how to do everything from uploading their first profile picture, to setting notifications for their individual needs, using emoji reactions, and working in channels. There’s even a basic overview of the chatrooms that are crucial to how Slack works.
Responding to User Pain Points
Slack hasn’t just guessed at the kind of support today’s users need with the Slack 101 experience either. Before launching its new tool, the Slack team engaged in in-depth research to find out exactly what their users have the most trouble with. For instance, according to Rayl, Slack learned that new users often don’t know that they can also access Slack as a desktop app. This means that many users are left to dig through their email to find the URL they want to access for the Slack channels that they’re in. This makes managing their collaboration experiences more complicated.
Channels are a crucial part of Slack’s operation. Today’s businesses need to know how to work efficiently in a channel and feel confident that they’re using the service correctly. Additionally, users aren’t always aware that they can edit the messages that they’ve sent a few minutes after they’ve been delivered. This isn’t always a feature that’s available in other products like Twitter and SMS. With Slack, if a user makes a mistake, they can just edit what they wrote when they recognise the error.
Through extensive research into Slack users, Rayl noted that some of the most common “aha!” moments who want to learn how to use Slack are figuring out how to take advantage of stars, reminders, mentions, pins, search, and file-sharing.
With the new Slack 101 online classroom, Rayl and her team hope that users entering the Slack environment for the first time will feel more confident about accessing the tools that they need. Rayl said that the purpose of creating Slack 101 was to make sure that people could be as successful as possible with the product, no matter where they might be coming to Slack from. The more people Slack can reach out to with its offering, the better – provided that everyone gets the right experience.
Users interested in getting an overview of how to make the most of the Slack collaboration tool can check out Slack 101 for themselves today. The whole classroom experience is available online from any browser.
