How to use Slack as a CRM

My team has come up with a very unusual way to use Slack and we think it’s interesting and useful enough to be worth sharing with you.

Step 1. Make ‘folders’ for your Slack channels

For example, you might have the following channels:

#project-awesomewebsite

#project-sillyapp

#health-physicalfitness

#health-nutrition

Generally, name channels like this: foldername-channelname. This allows you to use autocomplete to find the channel you want very quickly. It also groups channels together in the sidebar by foldername, which is useful.

Step 2. Use Slack as a CRM

Create channels named p-firstname-lastname (p is a ‘folder’ containing all of your people-info) and use these channels to track people that you care about tracking. If you don’t want these channels to clog up your sidebar, always /leave them when you are done with them.

Now when a teammate talks about John Doe and you’ve forgotten who John Doe is, you can just open up #p-john-doe and immediately refresh your memory. You can also make channels for places:

#place-berkeley

#place-paloalto

You can also make channels for organizations that you care about:

#org-google

#org-facebook

And you can note relevant connections between these places/orgs/people/projects/topics. For example, I might write in the #p-john-doe channel: “Works at: #org-google, lives in: #place-paloalto”