Let’s face it: Slack is a communication tool, not a support platform. It’s missing the prioritization and customer context you need to manage your unruly queue. As a result, response times slow, VIPs are left in limbo, and messages get lost in the ether.

And yet, many companies still do it.

This approach may work in the scrappy startup days. But for growing B2B companies, running high-touch support natively in Slack is unsustainable and jeopardizes the very relationships the tool was meant to nurture.

Fortunately, with the right software and strategies, managing Slack support at scale doesn’t have to be a losing battle. We’ll cover the core challenges growing companies face by offering personalized support on Slack, and break down the frameworks they need to streamline it.

Why Slack isn’t built for customer support

When growth comes knocking, Slack chaos quickly follows. And there’s nothing scarier than seeing hundreds of unprioritized Slack messages and having no idea where to start. You could be neglecting SLAs left and right, but you wouldn’t know it.

Support performance is untrackable

As you scale, your requests could 10x overnight, leaving your team to manage more Slack channels with limited visibility into how everyone is actually performing. If you can’t track FRT or resolution time — as a whole or by rep — essential support tasks can easily slip through the cracks. And a missed message is a missed customer.

Prioritization is impossible

When every request looks the same across an unwieldy support queue, it’s hard to figure out when to reply and to whom. And in Slack, there’s no way to analyze support volume or identify patterns in the kinds of issues customers are having.

On the most immediate level, this makes it all too easy to breach SLAs and ignore the messages that matter most — like urgent bugs and requests from your VIP customers. But at a high level, it denies teams the insights they need to troubleshoot larger product fixes and optimize their roadmaps.

Your team is constantly context-switching

Slack conversations leave out crucial ticket context, such as plan details, customer history, and product usage. Surfacing this information often requires tedious back-and-forths with customers, prolonging the process for everyone involved and wearing patience thin.

Collaboration is clunky

Managing so many channels also hinders cross-functional collaboration. Should a side conversation fall into the Slack abyss, that support ticket won’t get escalated to engineering, and you may never remember to follow up.

Put simply, Slack support can become a nightmare for support teams and customers alike.

Building a support workflow inside Slack works — until it doesn’t

Before looking to third-party solutions, overwhelmed support teams often try to remedy these issues by optimizing their workflows within Slack.

For example, they might adopt hacks like:

• Organizing their Slack channels by accounts, SLAs, or request types for easier navigation

• Configuring bots or keyword alerts that send notifications for high-priority requests

• Integrating Slack with their CRMs or legacy support systems for enhanced visibility and quicker access to customer context

Sound familiar? These band-aid fixes may do the trick for a while, but at the end of the day, you’re just optimizing manual processes that don’t serve your company in the long term.

What you’re missing isn’t a better workflow inside Slack. You’re missing a support platform that’s purpose-built for Slack.

How to deliver collaborative B2B support that scales with Plain

Plain makes personalized Slack support second nature. Whether you’re handling 10 or 1,000 customer channels, Plain’s Slack-native ticketing platform gives your team the speed, structure, and visibility they need to deliver exceptional support at scale.

But let’s be clear: Efficiency never erases the human touch. Plain automates the easy stuff so your team can dedicate even more time to building lasting customer relationships. Here’s how:

Benefit 1: Centralize your Slack support and monitor team performance in the same breath

Consolidate all of your Slack support in one intuitive platform with our 30-second set-up — yes, we timed it. Bonus: Plain also integrates with other support channels, including email, Discord, MS Teams and chat.

How does our Slack integration work exactly? Plain can aggregate all Slack requests into a single inbox, so you can manage those requests directly through Plain’s fast, purpose-built UI.

Plus, Plain’s native reporting gives you 360-degree visibility into every ticket, so you never have to wonder how effectively your team is handling it all. These dashboards monitor team performance at the rep, group, and customer level, optimize FRT and resolution times, and keep up with SLAs without leaving the platform. Even better? You can use Plain’s holistic insights into common customer issues and pain points to shape your long-term product strategy.

Take it from the leading developer identification company, Stytch. Jumping between Slack channels, Zendesk, and Discourse wasn’t sustainable as they scaled — so they consolidated their entire support queue in Plain. Now, Stytch’s team manages requests more efficiently than ever while giving their customers a truly bespoke support experience.

Benefit 2: Automate the busy work with smart workflows

Plain’s AI does the heavy lifting of categorizing and prioritizing your queue. It automatically labels customer threads, summarizes conversations in real time, and even groups messages where appropriate to avoid duplicate requests. 

The best part? Plain will suggest message responses based on your help docs and previously resolved requests. And with the opportunity to edit and approve every suggestion they make, you can rest assured we’ll never go rogue on your VIPs.

Thanks to integrations with Linear, Jira, and Shortcut, you can also directly link each thread to product issues and feature requests. For example, whenever an engineer fixes a bug, Plain will remind you to close the loop so you can let your customer know their issue has been resolved.

By tackling the support tasks that don’t require human intervention, Plain’s auto-triaging helps you show up better for the ones that do.

Benefit 3: Get the customer context you need right where you need it

No need to lose time context-switching or going back and forth with your customer — Plain automatically populates every thread with the details you need to get personal. Connect this data to your own systems via API, and instantly access plan details, customer history, and product usage information.

Now you can wow your customers with quick and thoughtful responses that cut straight to the root of their concerns.

Benefit 4: Organize side conversations for enhanced collaboration

Gone are the days of chaotic cross-functional collabs and abandoned side chats. Plain’s Discussions feature lets you manage internal conversations directly within the platform, ensuring every conversation is tied to the relevant ticket.

This makes it easy to escalate requests to your engineers without subjecting them to the usual Slack noise.

When the celebrated AI note-taking company Granola saw a surge of requests post-Series A, they used Plain’s Discussions to centralize communications between their support and engineering teams. Today, their team collaborates better, their customers get help faster, and their support system shores up their rapid growth.

Benefit 5: Create tiers to manage SLAs and give priority customers VIP treatment

With Plain’s Tiers, you can prioritize your queue based on support or pricing structure. For instance, you might set enterprise requests as your top priority, pro as second, then non-paying customers. You can even assign SLAs based on these tiers and set up alerts whenever an SLA is on the brink of a breach. That way, you’re always focusing on the relationships that drive growth.

And with Plain’s granular reports, you can see exactly where your customers fall across tiers and how well you perform with them.

Ready to bring order to the chaos?

Industry leaders like Stytch, Granola, Raycast, and Depot power their first-class support functions with Plain.

See Plain in action by booking a demo today.