Customer Service Pro Tip: Slack Notifications for WooCommerce

In running a successful WooCommerce store, customer service is key—but trying to stay “on the ball” can take a lot of work. Retaining loyal customers, delivering personalized service to VIP clients and tracking orders to ensure proper processing. Even for the keenest WooCommerce store owners, it’s a lot to try to juggle.

Fortunately, there’s a way to stay on top of your customer service while simultaneously “slacking off”. In this step-by-step guide, we’ll show you how to use Slack notifications for WooCommerce to deliver customer service like a pro and walk your customers through your sales funnels.

An Introduction to Slack and Uncanny Automator

With Uncanny Automator, you can receive automated notifications from your WooCommerce store so that you can deliver the best customer service to your clients in real time. If you’re new to Slack or Automator, however, don’t worry. Both are remarkably easy to use—and FREE to download!

What is Slack?

Slack is a digital messaging platform designed specifically for the workplace—or just the Chatty Cathys in the room. Use Slack to keep your team connected and informed wherever they are, whether they’re working from home or adjacent offices. Create different accounts with the same email address to make as many separate workspaces as your various teams require.

With more than 2,400 apps and integrations, this messaging platform gives new meaning to the expression “slacking off”. Connect Slack with your favorite project management tools such as Clickup, Google Drive or Monday.com to help your team work more collaboratively. Then pair Slack with a time-saving productivity app like Uncanny Automator so you can start crossing items off of your to-do list. Or just download some trivia games for casual Fridays and test your team’s general knowledge.

For the first time, slacking off won’t cost you anything. The free version of Slack comes with 1:1 video conferencing, 90-day message history and up to ten integrations. Once your team grows, you can upgrade to a paid plan for as little as $7.95/month.

Click here for Slack’s full pricing schedule and make sure to register for a FREE account so that you can follow the steps in our guide for receiving Slack notifications for your WooCommerce store.

What is Uncanny Automator?

Uncanny Automator is the #1 WordPress automation plugin—in other words, it’s the best way to have your WordPress website run itself. Seamlessly connect your most used apps and plugins to enhance your website’s functionality, boost your productivity and improve your workflows.

Uncanny Automator works using combinations of triggers and actions called recipes. Depending on what you’re craving, you can cook up cost-saving recipes to do just about anything your WordPress business requires—or your imagination dreams up. Auto-register and tag new site members in your mailing lists, generate and distribute personalized WooCommerce coupons or sync your website’s data to a third-party organizational tool like Airtable.

It’s not every day that you get someone to work for free—except when you download the FREE Automator plugin! Slack is, however, one of Automator’s powerful premium integrations so, after downloading the plugin, don’t forget to register your account so that you can receive 250 complimentary app credits. You can use some of these credits to follow this step-by-step guide then use the rest to try cooking up some Pro recipes of your own.

Connect Slack to WooCommerce with Automator

To receive Slack notifications for WooCommerce transactions, you’ll first have to connect Slack to Automator. There are a couple ways to do this and both only require a few clicks. You can click here for a detailed guide on connecting Slack to Automator or you can find the abridged version below.

Method 1: Connect Through Automator Settings

1. After downloading the Uncanny Automator plugin and registering your account, from your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > Settings > Premium Integrations.
2. Click Connect Slack Workspace.
3. Select the Workspace you would like to connect to Automator (note that Automator can only connect to one Slack Workspace at a time).
4. Fill in the Bot Setup fields.
5. Start automating!

Method 2: Connect Through Automator Recipes

1. From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > Add New. In the pop-up window that appears, select either Logged-in users or Everyone.
2. In the Triggers panel, click Add action then click on Slack and follow the same steps from the previous method.

Now that all of your ingredients—i.e., plugins—are prepped and ready, it’s time to start making some delicious, customer-service recipes.

Slack Notifications for Better Sales Funnels

Getting prospective customers smoothly through your sales funnel is the first step in delivering the best service possible. But sometimes, they just need a little extra nudge. With this recipe, you can notify your sales team if a customer has repeatedly expressed interest in an item but hasn’t made the leap to checkout quite yet.

Step 1: Create a New Recipe

From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > Add New. In the pop-up window that appears, select Logged-in users.

Step 2: Name Your Recipe

It won’t be long before you have a whole ten-course dinner’s worth of recipes so it’s important to come up with a naming convention for your automation creations. We’ve named this recipe WooCommerce-Slack: Sales Team so that, at a glance, we know the integrations involved in and the recipient of the Slack message.

Step 3: Configure Your Trigger

In the Triggers panel, select WooCommerce.

 From the drop-down list that appears, select A user views a product.

Automator will then prompt you to select a product. Once you’ve selected the product from the drop-down list, you can modify the number of times the customer has to view the product before the recipe will trigger. We’ve selected “3”. Click Save. Your trigger should look like this:

Step 4: Configure Your Action

In the Actions panel, click Add action and select Slack.

From the drop-down list that appears, select Send a message to a channel if you have created a channel for your sales team. Alternatively, you can send a message directly to a specific member of your team by selecting Send a direct message to a Slack user.

Automator will then prompt you to select the channel to which you would like to send your message. After that, you can draft the message using tokens—dynamic information pulled from your WordPress website—to be as detailed as you’d like.

Click on the asterisk on the right-hand side of the Message field and customize your notification as you’d like.

When you’re finished, your message can look something like this:

Once you’ve drafted your message, click Save. Your action should look like this:

Once you upgrade to Automator Pro, you can add a filter to this recipe so that it will only run if the user hasn’t yet purchased the product to save your sales team some time. Here’s what that would look like:

Step 5: Go Live!

You are almost ready to send Slack notifications to your sales team. All that’s left to do is toggle the recipe from Draft to Live and start upping your conversion rates! Your recipe should look like this:

Slack Notifications for Customer Loyalty

Professional customer service doesn’t just end at the checkout counter—or, in this case, the checkout page. Now that your sales team is busy converting indecisive prospects into loyal customers, you’ll want to ensure that they stay loyal. If you’re using WooCommerce Subscriptions, this recipe will help you with your customer retention program so that you never have to say goodbye to your favorite clients.

Step 1: Create and Name a New Recipe

Just as before, create a new recipe and give it a name that makes it easy to recognize at a glance. We’ve named this recipe WooCommerce-Slack: Customer Retention.

Step 2: Configure Your Trigger

Once again, select WooCommerce in the Triggers panel. From the drop-down list that appears, select A user cancels a subscription to a product.

Automator will prompt you to select a subscription product. Once you’ve selected the product, click Save. Your trigger should look like this:

Step 3: Configure Your Action

Just as in the previous recipe, in the Actions panel, click Add action and select Slack. From the drop-down list that appears, select the channel you’ve created for your retention team or the team member responsible. Use tokens to provide your message recipient(s) with the information they need to regain your customer’s business.

Your message might look something like this:

After you’ve formatted your message, click Save.

Step 4: Keep Your Customers!

Once your team gets the timely information they need, you’ll never have to say any painful goodbyes to your customers. All you have to do now is toggle your recipe from Draft to Live so you can keep your customers!

Slack Notifications for the VIPs

With customer service this good, it won’t be long before your customers start spending the big bucks. When they do, this recipe will help you roll out the red carpet so you can give your highest-paying customers the attention they deserve.

Step 1: Create and Name Your Recipe

Just as before, create a new recipe and give it an easily recognizable name. We’ve named this recipe WooCommerce-Slack: VIP Customers.

Step 2: Configure Your Trigger

Automator gives you the flexibility to define VIP any which way you’d like. Perhaps you want to recognize the customers who purchase large quantities. Maybe you’d like to extend your best service to the customers who spend large sums of money. Automator lets you decide what VIP means.

In the Triggers panel, select WooCommerce.

We’ve chosen to define VIP by the amount of money spent by selecting A user completes, pays for, lands on a thank you page for an order with a total greater than, less than or equal to a specific amount. Here’s what VIP means in our example:

Once you decide to upgrade to Automator Pro, you can get the VIP treatment yourself. Click Add another trigger in any recipe to give yourself greater control over and flexibility for your workflows. With multiple triggers, VIP could mean absolutely anything you want!

Step 3: Configure Your Action

Add an action and draft your message just as we did in previous examples. Here’s what our action looks like:

Click Save.

Step 4: Roll Out the Recipe—and the Red Carpet

Toggle your recipe from Draft to Live and watch your customers line-up for their chance to strut down your red carpet. Your recipe should look like this:

Keep Automating So You Can Slack Off

Now that you’ve gotten the hang of cooking up recipes in the Automator kitchen, it’s time to come up with some new flavors of your own. As a reseller or distributor, use Automator to send Slack notifications to your suppliers when a customer leaves their product a rave review. Then send it to your marketing team on Slack so they can decide whether to share it on social media.

What are some of the ways that you would like to improve your customer service? Let us know in the comments section below.