‘Magic for Teams’ replaces temps with a Slack Channel
Personal concierge service, Magic, expands core service to groups via Slack
April 21st, 2017 — SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Magic, the AI and human-powered concierge service, is releasing a public beta of their integration with Slack. The feature is an extension of the core service Magic has always provided, but for the first time, the text-based, all-in-one solution will be available to teams instead of being limited to individual users. The new feature gives businesses the power to instantly and near-effortlessly offload almost any task, billed by the minute, while avoiding the costs typically associated with hiring, training, and maintaining temporary employees.
Many business setbacks are bandwidth related. Hiring temps can be a solution but the initial activation energy is costly and it can lead to undesirable work culture. With Magic for teams, assistants are ready to help immediately, 24/7.
“Magic for Teams saves businesses time and money. Magic is like a 24/7 secure employee in Slack that you only pay if you use.” -Mike Chen, CEO & Co-Founder
For two years, individual clients have been executing creative productivity hacks using Magic. Now, businesses have the freedom to do the same. The same proprietary software Magic developed for auditing work to the minute is being used to get some of the most granular time tracking available in business. Similarly, the same software that Magic built to remember preferences and tasks across multiple workers and across separate shifts is being implemented with the added ability to interpret team dynamics.
Magic claims its service works best when individuals and businesses use it enough to realize just how powerful Magic can be. Once they begin using it as a force multiplier, they begin looking at their businesses in whole new ways. While some individual users have always been using Magic to help their businesses, teams are beginning to discover even more ways Magic can be useful.
For example, it is much easier for managers to get approval for Magic time rather than approval for a new hire. At the same time, they love that they can completely avoid all of the non-trivial team dynamic considerations that come with it. Magic is also elastic and scalable; if teams need two or three times more help they can pay two or three times more and get it. If users need to stop paying completely, they can stop at anytime, a flexibility not possible with normal hires.
“We launched Magic to make people’s personal lives better, and it’s been amazing to watch as the same product has been enabling businesses to achieve more with less resources.” said Mike Chen, “I think if you wanted to, you could start a new company and never hire another employee. You could do it all on Magic. You couldn’t start every company this way just yet, but probably a surprising number of them.”
Observations from initial beta tests of Magic for Teams with Slack
In early March, Magic let dozens of companies privately test the Slack integration and found teams quickly adapted and began using Magic in a number of creative ways. These are some of the notes from Magic’s Slack integration beta test team:
- Teams are using Magic to empower Head of Operations and Office Managers
- Executive Assistants are using Magic with Teams to manage the company’s travel needs
- Small founding teams are using Magic as an extra hand as they build out their product and company
- Internal teams are using Magic to offload repetitive tasks of their current workflow
- Larger teams are using Magic as an extra employee when they need ad hoc
- Teams are using Magic to manually test workflows before putting engineering time into automating them; they found that it was cheaper to just use Magic
- Companies train Magic on specific business tasks — and then just turn the crank
- Sales teams use Magic to provide lead generation throughout the night
- Small teams use Magic to provide 24/7 responsive customer service during off hours
Magic is one of the most powerful conversational commerce companies on Earth. Bringing this robust service to businesses through a popular channel like Slack should prove to be a game changer for team productivity.
If you would like to Magic with Slack on your team, you can sign up at https://getmagic.com/teams or if you already have an account, just ask Magic.
ABOUT MAGIC
Magic, Inc., which has offices in San Francisco and Manila, replaces the need for a personal assistant by providing a text-based concierge service, available 24/7, that learns and improves with every request. The company vision is to bring the ‘magic’ of a high-quality, personal-assistant to everyone. Magic has already helped hundreds of thousands of people across the globe reach new levels of productivity. Learn more at getmagic.com
Contact Info
Brad Kohlenberg
Head of PR/Communications
From: https://blog.getmagic.com/2017/04/21/new-slack-add-on-powered-by-magic-replaces-temps/
