Slack & Salesforce Field Service Vision
With the Slack acquisition, teams across Salesforce have been thinking about integration opportunities. For Salesforce Field Service, we explored a vision where Slack can be utilized for field contractors.
Overview
Some of our projects include strategic vision explorations. In this case, I worked closely with another designer Kristen, a PM, and an eng architect to define a direction for how we might integrate Slack into the Salesforce Field Service offering.
Role
Co-designer with Kristen Muramoto on 6 month project
Led research sessions, discussions with customer advisory boards, and defined direction of how we might integrate Slack
Ask from Leadership
Explore utilizing Slack for emergency dispatch situations
The initial ask from leadership was to see how Slack could be used for sending emergency break-fix broadcasts to field technicians in the area. Given Dreamforce, the world’s largest software conference was coming up, there was a lot of buzz around showing customers Slack integration opportunities.
But What Does Emergency Dispatch Entail within Salesforce Field Service?
Salesforce Field Service
The Field Service product offering provides a comprehensive view of workforce management and keeps track of customers’ field operations on the Salesforce platform. With emergency dispatch, customers can create emergency appointments to schedule field worker to the site as soon as possible.
Emergency Dispatch Steps
Receive Emergency Case
An emergency request comes in, say to fix a malfunctioning elevator
Find Tech & Assign Work
The dispatcher identifies the field worker to take on the job and schedules them
Do Work & Wrap Up
Once the job is done, the field worker signs off on the job and creates a report
Talking to Customers
We spoke to Field Service Customers and subject matter experts to better understand emergency dispatch flows and mission critical use cases:
What are important considerations during emergency dispatch situations?
How does the office communicate with field workers efficiently?
Where are there break points?
Key Insights
Emergency response is mission critical, change management likely slow
Field service engineers are focused on work, not device screens
Most communication is 1 to 1 over phone; fast confirmation & hand-off but if call goes unanswered multiple follow-ups are required
Some customers don’t have visibility into field service engineer availability (service providers & contractors)
Considerations
Age & technology proficiency are factors for adoption
Video & voice calling may be more effective than chat when discussing work
From our research, it did not make sense to integrate Slack with emergency dispatch use cases, given the time sensitivity nature of the work and how Slack is utilized.
Taking a Step Back & Running Workshops
So if not emergency dispatch, how might we leverage the Slack platform to improve field service processes today?
Redefining Research Questions to Focus on Communication & Collaboration
How do users currently communicate and collaborate on their jobs across personas & jobs?
When and why are there breaks in communication?
What are common use cases that require collaboration in field service?
What channels do they use, and for what purposes and urgency level?
Workshop Activity
We held external and Internal workshops around communication and collaboration focusing on each step of field service: receiving work, assigning the job to a mobile worker, and completing the job on site.
*Challenge - we couldn’t mention Slack because the acquisition was still in its final processes so kept terminology very generic, which helped us really focus on the jobs and goals rather than the tool
Key Insights
Minimize noise
Notifications can be overwhelming and are easily lost with chatter, text, and noise
Reduce back and forth
Lots of back and forth communication & phone tag that could be more efficient
Context & record keeping
Important for customers to keep audit trail of what was communicated & transacted
Categories
Employee Experience - interactions that help with team onboarding and payroll
Customer Engagement - support how Field Service interacts with customers
Partner Collaboration - support communication with vendors in inventory management
Team Collaboration - how field service teams interact with each other
Top Jobs
Asking for help (identifying skilled contact, parts swap, requesting additional assistance, etc.)
Updating stakeholders (notify when running late or part delays, job is completed and ready for billing, etc.)
Where can Slack help Field Service Most?
🛑 Slack is NOT great for
Urgent responses
Concentration-heavy tasks
Complex workflows
✅ Slack is great for
Asynchronous communication
Reminders, requests and alerts
Simple tool integrations
Thin vs Thick Work
Thin Work - Short, quick tasks, collaboration not required, within one context
Medium Work - Multi-step tasks, collaboration not always required but helpful, within one or few contexts
Thick Work- Requires deep concentration & skill, may involve collaboration among multiple roles and companies, may involve time and/or emotional pressure, may involve intense context switching
Slack messaging is great for asynchronous, non-urgent thin to medium work
Our Focus
Slack’s integrations are best when they surface data and workflows for the user to get their work done quickly and move on to the next task.
Rather than emergency dispatch, we decided to focus on the “thinner” jobs around asking for non-urgent help and requesting nearby parts, which were highly requested by customers and differentiates field service and slack from other product areas.
We also wanted to explore the contractor gig economy space, where workers don’t have access to the Field Service App, and can do their jobs within the context of Slack.
Vision Story
We came up with a story focusing on expanding our offering to contractors who can use Slack to communicate with their teams and keep track of their work.
Broadcasting and Accepting Non-Urgent Work
A customer’s drainage pump is damaged and needs to be replaced, so he contacts customer service agent Rena, who searches for a qualified technician to take the job. Rena sees that everyone is busy, so she broadcasts the job on Slack to her company’s trusted contractor community.
Alex, a technician, is notified of the job in Slack, reviews the details, and accepts. When she arrives at the customer’s house, she looks over the job’s work plan, but realizes an important replacement part in her van-stock is damaged.
Searching Inventory and Requesting Nearby Part
Alex searches team inventory in Slack and sees that nearby tech, Tesha (part of her contracting team), happens to have the part.
Alex sends a direct message to Tesha, aided by a Slack bot and a pre-written template, to request the drainage pump part.
Getting Help & Completing the Job
After Alex receives the needed part from Tesha, she continues working but gets stuck.
She asks Slack bot for assistance and sees that she can chat with experts in the company to finish installation and complete her job.
Alex then tells Slack bot to update the work order status to completed, automatically syncing to the Salesforce platform.
What Happened Next
We circled back and presented the direction pivot to leadership. We were given positive feedback for taking the time to speak directly with customers and push for a useful experience that will garner higher adoption.
Unfortunately, we learned that we wouldn’t have a slot to present at Dreamforce, and there would be no development work planned, given other priorities and strategic focus areas. This meant that we wouldn’t be continuing defining the direction and iterating on designs.
What We Learned
Overall, it was a fun exercise to be able to take part of shaping product vision that hadn’t yet been defined in a roadmap and be our own PMs and researchers. A few things we learned:
Don’t be afraid to challenge leadership
Do establish yourself as a strategic partner
Do lean on your research partners
Do consider customer experiences outside of Salesforce
Don’t get discouraged when a major project is deprioritized