There are endless players in the transportation sector, from those offering private travel options, to charter companies, airlines, logistics brands, and public transportation suppliers. While all of these organisations may differ in their operations, they do have something in common: a need for consistent, agile, and efficient communication. In a landscape as flexible and distributed as the transportation sector, keeping teams and employees on the same page can be complex. However, with the right UC tools, it’s possible to retain excellent communication and team work, regardless of where staff might be. Lyft, one of the world’s biggest private transportation and car hire companies, recently discovered the benefits of updating their communication systems with Slack. The Business branch of the company, responsible for transporting business travellers, employees, and commercial clients around the world, now uses Slack extensively to boost collaboration.
Unlocking Opportunities with Slack Collaboration
The Lyft Business brand has become a powerful partner for many companies over the years, offering exceptional, reliable transport for a range of use cases. However, as the Business division has grown, it has also encountered a few issues with its previous strategies for communication and collaboration. Over time, the business leaders discovered traditional document sharing, messaging and email apps just weren’t getting the job done anymore. They decided to switch to Slack, to synchronise the workforce, and preserve productivity. According to Lyft Business, Slack has become a fundamental part of keeping dispersed staff connected and responsive, for both internal and external communications. Though the variety of tools Lyft Business was using before Slack worked when team members were located in the same space, it couldn’t scale as the group began to expand into different regional offices. Additionally, the brand found that it was difficult to find moments when dozens of crucial people involved with account could connect at the same time. Fortunately, switching to Slack meant the organisation could implement account-specific and region-specific channels, used for real-time synchronisation across staff. According to Senior Manager Samantha Lutz, one of the things she uses Slack frequently for is to get high-level updates. This keeps executive sponsors aware of the current status of the business, without lengthy emails.
Leveraging Slack and Salesforce in Unison
Slack’s connection with Salesforce has also proven to be valuable for the brand’s sales teams. Slack has helped to free up crucial time for team members, while offering insights into key partnerships, so employees can focus their attention here it’s needed most. Increased transparency is also helping to make the Lyft workforce more efficient and productive. Using the “Troops” integration, which connects Salesforce and Slack in one convenient environment, sales reps can update deal information and pipeline dashboards from within their collaboration tool. This boosts visibility into customer data, and reduces the amount of time employees spend on tasks. According to Senior Strategic Account Executive, Tyler Lefeber, the team can now spend more time prospecting, and less time dealing with administrative work. Before Slack was introduced to the Lyft Business group, the sales teams struggled to find a location where they could come together with local market managers and other professionals. The employees had a hard time collaborating on custom offerings for key accounts, which made it harder to accelerate deal closures. According to the company, they believe a lot of deals were probably missed simply because the team didn’t have an ability for cross-platform collaboration. Now, with Slack at the helm, collaboration has become a more convenient experience for the sales professionals. These teams can work closely with wider IT and marketing departments, as they look for ways to connect with new customers and boost retention. Lefeber noted his teams need to be able to work on a cross-functional basis, and understand what teams they can leverage to create comprehensive partnership transport packages for clients. The ability to create channels and specific groups in Slack makes it easier to keep everyone on the same page. For Lyft, Slack has accelerated business velocity, and improved company culture.
