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Last active November 12, 2016 19:10
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Use of Slack in Client - Provider relationships
How do y'all handle the "join my slack" request from clients/prospective
clients?
I'm unexcited to do so before a contract is signed due to people's tendency to
hook automation into it, so I'd be in a dubious insurance predicament if
something went wrong
Afterwards that goes away, but there are arguments against using it then too,
that I don't really love, but makes sense
1> People eat a ton of time up with their budget with urgent but unimportant
questions they'd answer themselves with less chatty comms, that really disrupt
some technical contributors
2> Your client alone has all records of communication, and can edit and delete
them and keep them from you at will. Obviously #2 is only rarely a problem, but
protection against that case makes slack a dicey proposition for client-service
work in the "CYA" situations.
3> Slack presence performance can be a large drain on a team "why weren't you on
slack" or "be on slack when you're working" is not only opening up the team to
the *client's* distractions, but distractions from other slacks, from other
client's slacks too, due to the construction of the Slack program.
4> Overcommunication, especially with peristent, long lived documentation, is
really valuable. When on slack, people tend to make documents far less. So
discussion happens, one time, that many companys will lose because they're not
paying for slack, and other companies will lose track of because searching
message archives isn't great, and pinning isn't great.
So, what are your successes, failures, policies and more around this? I'm
posting on a weekend, but feel free to speak up whenever you see this. I think
the tool has some wonderful uses *within* organizations that were priorly neck
deep in email, but I worry it doesn't fit every situation well, or you have to
use it atypically like "Only turn on notifications in a wierd way, and only turn
it on X times a day", etc
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