The Doctor Will Slack You Now: How Slack for Industries will Transform Everything from Medicine to Banking

When it comes to industries like healthcare, banking, and government, remote work and digital customer experiences might not be immediately what springs to mind. But we're in the middle of a generational shift with how people work and serve customers that cuts across every industry.

Jujhar Singh, EVP and GM of Salesforce Industries, took some time to share his early thoughts on Slack and how it can help industries create a digital HQ to adapt to a new era of work and customer expectations.

Q: How has it changed how you work with your teams?

The most exciting thing is this whole concept of real-time channels. And the reason I think they are super innovative is that you can remodel your whole organization as a digital HQ.

You can set up channels for different teams - including internal and external people. You can maintain things for posterity. You're doing real-time collaboration, but it is all available for you to come back two years from now to look at it.

Second, Slack has a richness of emojis. Rather than sending short sentences back, I find sending an emoji back of clapping far more emotive and easy to use, and it's not cluttering conversations.

I've also been impressed with Huddles; it's like switching gears and getting to the next level when working. Instead of being text information, I'm doing a voice conversation in context.

Q: When you first heard about Salesforce and Slack teaming up, what was your first thought when it came to integration with Salesforce Industries?

The first thing that went through my mind was the boundless opportunities across different industries, be it health or financial services, or any other industry.

The opportunity is huge. On one hand, you have Salesforce, which is a leader in multiple different areas including sales, service, marketing, and commerce. When you combine it with a company such as Slack that is a leader in collaboration and is hyper-focused on user experience, I believe you can fundamentally change the engagement experience across multiple industries.

I truly believe that Slack for Customer 360 can be a game-changer for all of our industries.

Q: What makes Slack so innovative in your eyes? What are some of the most exciting features for you?

If you think about the collaboration tools out there, there is not a single tool where user experience is a religion. When you look at how Slack has organized the whole application, the thought process of adding new features, it is all driven from the lens of the end user with Slack. I find that obsession with user experience shows up in Slack products and I find it really encouraging.

The other thing that really stands out about Slack is the integration experience. It's quite consistent as you go from one application to another. So it's the same messaging, the same channel mechanisms if you integrate a Salesforce app, Workday, or another application.

So my end-user experience is always the same Slack messaging infrastructure. And I find that very refreshing.

Q: Can you share an example of how you see Slack benefiting an Industries customer?

Healthcare is a great example of an industry that can gain so much through Slack. When you think about the healthcare industry as a patient, you are the patient of a doctor. But in reality, there is a whole team behind them at all times.

Let's say you are a diabetic patient. I have my physician, but I have a dietician who is helping me with my diet. There are care nurses who follow up with me. So, there is a full team, there are caregivers, and your partner is also very interested in you following the necessary recommendations. Through Slack, you actually get them collaborating with one another so that you can improve health outcomes.

And, if something goes wrong, you can escalate, and everyone on the team can be on the same page within an instant and can start responding. That power of care teams working in tandem through Slack with one another, responding in real time, and swarming to help the patient become better is very unique.

Q: How can industries balance the concept of a digital HQ with the realities of having to deliver service in-person as well?

We have the perception that some of these industries like healthcare and the public sector always need to be in person. One of the things that pandemic has really shown us is that this concept of hybrid is here to stay.

People have started their journeys on virtual care over the course of the pandemic; they've seen the benefits of virtual. There are still going to be instances where you may have to go to the doctor, but this hybrid universe is going to stay. You're still going to occasionally meet your doctor in person, but so much of the patient experience outside of that physical appointment can happen in a digital, collaborative fashion.

The same could be said for how banking teams negotiate deals or how a college faculty member communicates and shares info with faculty and students, even if there may be team dinners or advisory meetings that happen in person.

Digital HQs are here to stay.

Q: Industries like healthcare obviously have a lot of compliance concerns. How can Salesforce and Slack help address this?

With compliance built right into Slack, you don't get into a situation where you're collaborating and compromising on compliance.

In my healthcare example, we're ensuring that you check every box on HIPAA compliance so the full healthcare team is able to collaborate and focus on the patient.

We recently launched Corporate and Investment Banking for Financial Services Cloud. The Slack Customer 360 really helps us radically change the experience for the heavily regulated financial services industry. With Slack, we can now connect the right bankers with the right researchers, all on one channel. You can collaborate across different teams on desktop, on mobile, in real-time and you can require NDAs to join specific channels in order to protect material non-public information.

What is extremely important in our healthcare and financial services use cases, and in any industry dealing with sensitive information, is that we're bringing in the right set of people and ensuring that only the right information is shared.

You have Salesforce Industries helping you with compliance and industry AI, and we're now bringing in Slack for a seamless collaboration experience. That shows the power of what Salesforce Industries is becoming.

For more information on how Slack is transforming industries, gohere.

Read Jujhar'slast Q&A on the strategy behind Salesforce's $2B Industries Business.

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