How to Connect Drift and Slack

At Drift, we want you to be able to connect with your prospects and customers at any time from anywhere. We know that our customers aren't always at their computers or spend a lot of their work day communicating through Slack. With our Slack integration, Slack can be your hub for communicating with your team internally and your customers externally!

1. what this integration can do
2. how to set up the integration
3. how to use the integration
4. useful shortcuts
5. FAQs

What can this integration do?

Good question. Here are its essential features:

• Drift App acts as a bot in a Slack channel. This bot...
  • sends a message every time a new conversation is started by a Site Visitor
  • can create either a new channel for every individual live chat conversation or post in one channel
  • provides contact enrichment details immediately on email capture
  • provides a link to open the conversation in app.drift.com

• Agents from within Slack can...
  • see when and from where a chat was started and join them
  • update Conversation statuses (Open, Closed, Pending)
  • see which Conversations they are routed into (or not) 
  • respond and receive messages in real time 
  • invite Drift agents to join the conversation in Slack and Drift using an @shortcut

Setting up the Integration

To set up the integration, go to Settings > App Settings > Integrations > Slack. Or, click here! Click Connect Account and do the following in the modal that pops up:

• Sign in to your intended Slack workspace
• Select the channel you want Drift to post Conversation notifications to
• Authorize Drift to connect and post into your workspace

From within Drift App Settings, here's what you should see:

From within Slack, here's what you should see:

How it Works

Each time a visitor or user starts a new conversation through the Drift widget, a message will post in the configured Slack channel. This includes messages from all Playbooks (and therefore all inboxes as well). To understand how this really works, let's look at the integration in actions:

From your Site Visitor's perspective, everything will look exactly the same as usual. Keep reading to see what this exact conversation looks like from within Slack.

From within your team's Slack workspace, in the channel that you chose, Drift will ping your team with a message like the one below, automatically creating a channel for each new conversation (#q-visitor-84780 in this example). 

To reply via Slack, click the channel next to Reply in Slack and join it. There, you'll be able to message the visitor directly! You can also click Reply in Drift to open the conversation within Drift itself.

Data enrichment occurs instantaneously on email capture. See the example below, where when a site visitor enters their email, the Drift integration in Slack automatically provides a notification saying "We just learned more about [Site Visitor]".

All the information provided should be matching the ClearBit Enrichment and firmographic information that is also populated within the Drift web app on the contact. Read here to learn more about ClearBit enrichment. 

Features of the Drift Slack Message

The other place where email capture and data enrichment will be reflected is right within the original Slack message from Drift about the conversation. Notice that in the previous image of the message, it said "Conversation with visitor" and now it says "Conversation with Camilla Guo". 

In addition, if you watch the clip below, you'll be able to observe how to 

1. Use slack command /leave to leave a channel with a specific site visitor
2. Update conversation Status to Closed
3. Re-open a conversation that has been marked Closed
4. Set a conversation Status to Pending
5. See More Detail and Less Detail about the Site Visitor after email enrichment

Preventing Noise by Limiting Channel Creation

Maybe your team wants to be notified of new chats through Slack, but doesn't actually want to have new channels open or chat directly with site visitors through Slack. We have a setting that stops creating new channels and just links you to the conversation within your app.drift.com inbox which can be found on the Slack App page within Drift. 

Useful Shortcuts

To find all the useful Drift shortcuts for Slack, just type "@drift help" into any of your designated Drift app channels.

This should return a full list of all the shortcut/commands that our App offers: 

FAQs

How do I make sure the channels don’t get out of hand if Drift makes a new one for every conversation?

Immediately after you change the conversations status to "closed", channels will auto-archive. If something happens in that conversation and somebody on your team, or you, respond to that thread, the channel will open back up again.

How do I change the channel that Drift is posting to?

Easy – head to your Slack Settings page in Drift to update this. You must be an admin of your Drift account to make this change.

Do I need to pay for Drift to access this integration?

Nope! It’s completely free.

How do I know it’s working? 

Once you install the Drift JavaScript snippet on your site, send yourself a message and try it out!

I sent myself a message and it’s not showing up in Slack. What’s the deal?

Try answering these troubleshooting questions to see if they might be causing any issues:

1.  Have you tried to connect a previous Drift account to this current Slack account? You can only have one Drift account connected to a Slack account.
2. Are you the Admin in the Slack account, not just the Drift account? Please note that only the Admin can add the Slack account to the Drift account
3. Are you seeing an error message in slack? Try disconnecting and reconnecting your Slack integration with Drift. Please note that your Admin must add the Slack account to the Drift Account.
4. Have multiple people tried to connect their slack account to this Drift account? Just one user should connect their Drift account to the Slack account.

Yes, absolutely. Any attachments sent from slack will get posted in the conversation to the person you’re talking with.

Still stuck? Email us at support@drift.com. Not using Drift yet? Get your free account here.