Slack Improves Bots to Help Conquer the Workplace

BuzzFeed

Bots are becoming an essential part of instant messaging so of course a lot of companies have picked them up. What a lot of companies are not doing though is making them their own and improving on them. Slack is a group chat for the workplace so users can't really hang around trying to work out what they need to tell the bot to get the reaction they need. To tackle this Slack have introduced buttons so you can choose how to respond more efficiently.

Slack aren't the first company to use buttons to make their bots work better. Kik's bots may be less important, but they've been using buttons since they put the bots into place. On Kik it means whether users want to play games or choose clothes, they can do so easily. On Slack, these buttons are going to lead to more important functions like approving or denying an expense report, or booking travel for someone within the company. Some of these things will seem similar to other instant messenger's non-business options, but they make Slack more streamlined. They want the companies using them to be able to do everything within Slack.

The buttons are not only tied to Slack though and with the introduction of these also comes partnerships with 12 different companies including Kayak, a travel booking company and Kyber a task management and productivity tool. All these bots will be utilised to make business more practical so if a company has a better tool, it probably will be picked up. Slack has 3 million daily users who in average use the program for 10 hours each day with 2 of those usually being one active session. This means that if you can provide a service on there, users will likely remember your company and what you do.

These adjustments were a smart idea and other instant messengers should follow suit. Slack are already a huge service and this will help it grow even more. Slack is still open to developers to create their own bots so if you have your own idea to improve business, then you might have a chance to make some money with them.

Rosina Brooker

Rosina is a Songbird writer with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is glad to be playing around with apps and writing about them in the mean time! Follow her @Songbird_Rosina

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