Customer support plays a crucial role in shaping customer experiences and loyalty. Group chat and community platforms like Slack facilitate a personal, real-time and high-touch way of engaging with and supporting customers.

Slack was originally designed as a tool for team collaboration, but increasingly has evolved into a multi-functional platform that companies are using to connect with customers. Slack has become so popular and integral to companies communication and workflow that connecting directly with customer on Slack reduces the effort required to engage and helps streamline the support process whilst also giving improved visibility for everyone else in the channel.

While Slack offers great opportunities for real-time support, it’s not scalable and can be very resource intensive to manage without any automation. This is where AI-powered customer support bots come into play.

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In this guide, we’ll explore how businesses can leverage Mava, an AI-powered customer support bot for Slack, to automate responses based on their knowledge base, improve customer satisfaction, and streamline support processes.

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1. Why Slack is Becoming a Customer Support Hub

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Brief Overview of Slack

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Slack is one of the most popular messaging platforms, initially designed to facilitate internal communication and collaboration for teams. It provides channels for discussions, direct messaging, file sharing, and integrations with other tools, making it an invaluable part of many workplaces.

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But Slack’s utility has grown beyond internal team collaboration. Many businesses now use it as an external customer support channel, particularly for product communities, customer feedback, and service inquiries. Slack enables faster communication with customers in a real-time, familiar setting.

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The Shift Toward AI Customer Support in Slack

As more businesses recognize the value of real-time interaction with their customers, they are incorporating Slack into their customer support strategies. Whether it’s answering product questions, providing technical assistance, or resolving issues, Slack channels offer direct access to the support teams.

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However, with the increase in demand for instant replies and 24/7 support, relying solely on human-driven Slack support is no longer scalable for growing businesses. Mava solves this problem by offering an AI-powered support bot that automatically responds to customer queries in Slack, powered by a company’s knowledge base. With Mava, companies can easily upload content from their websites, GitBooks, or Google Docs, and the AI will be trained to answer common questions.

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2. The Growing Trend: Why Businesses Are Using Slack for Customer Support

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Slack as a New Support Channel for Businesses

Slack has become an appealing alternative to traditional support channels like email several reasons:

• Instant Communication: Unlike email, where responses may take hours or even days, Slack fosters real-time and collaborative conversations, keeping customers engaged and ensuring faster query resolution.

• Familiar Environment: Many customers are already familiar with Slack’s interface and use it in their day-to-day work. This makes it easier for businesses to reach their customers where they already are.

• Community Building: Slack is also commonly used for community management, where customers interact with each other and support teams in a shared space, increasing engagement and building loyalty.

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Slack allows businesses to not only resolve customer issues but also build vibrant communities of users who can help each other, reducing the overall support burden on the business.

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Scalability Challenges in Human-Driven Slack Support

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However, while Slack offers many benefits, human-led support within Slack has limitations. As customer bases grow, the sheer volume of queries can overwhelm support teams, leading to longer response times, overworked staff, and potentially frustrated customers. The manual nature of human-driven Slack support also means businesses must dedicate significant resources to staffing, particularly to maintain 24/7 availability.

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This is where AI-powered automation comes in, allowing companies to provide responsive, high-quality support at scale.

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3. How AI Chatbots Enhance Customer Support on Slack

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There are numerous benefits of using an AI chatbot in slack, including but not limited to: 

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• Instant Response with 24/7 Availability
• Responds in over 100 languages
• Handels all repetitive questions, allowing your team to focus on more important work
• Extremely cost effective
• Can provide reference links to your existing knowledge base content for further reading
• Can instantly fetch and relay content across thousands of pages of documents or websites that your team would have to search for
• Can handle multiple questions simultaneously

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One of the most common pieces of feedback we hear is that the AI can free up the team to focus on more important tasks and make their role less repetitive. 

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4. How to set up a customer support AI bot in Slack

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Setting up a customer support bot, such as Mava, takes under 10 minutes and is free to use (paid plans available).

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1. To get started, head over to Mava’s website and create a free account for your team. 
2. Once created, head over to the integrations section within Mava and press the ‘Connect’ button within the Slack integration box.
3. You’ll be redirected to Slack’s authentication screen to log in and select the workspace and channel you want to add the Mava AI bot to.
4. Once done you’ll need to head back into Mava to add your AI content - this can be done almost instantly by linking your existing Gitbook, Website, HelpCentre or even google docs.
5. Turn on the AI within Mava’s AI settings section and then tag the bot in Slack to check it responds.

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You can use Mava’s Slack AI bot in large public customer communities with thousands of members, as well as in Slack Connect channels where you’re providing support to one specific customer.

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A full setup guide, to get started with Mava AI with instructional screenshots can be found within the Mava gitbook guide here. 

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P.s. You can also connect your entire support setup into Mava which offers webchat, email, Discord and Telegram support integrations natively. 

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Conclusion: Future of Customer Support on Slack with AI

AI-powered chatbots like Mava are reshaping the way businesses approach customer support, offering a solution that is not only scalable but also efficient and cost-effective. By integrating AI into Slack, companies can provide instant, personalized, and 24/7 support, enhancing the overall customer experience.