Many of Kustomer’s clients will be familiar with Slack, the dedicated online messaging platform for helping teams communicate.
Slack is not just relied on for communication between coworkers, but for notifications and other automated messages as well. For this reason, Kustomer users may seek to post automated messages to Slack for a variety of reasons. While no formal Slack integration exists in Kustomer’s ecosystem, building a custom integration is a relatively simple process when using Kustomer Workflows!
There is almost limitless potential to the uses of a Kustomer + Slack integration, including Conversation spot checks, receiving Customer CSAT scores, confirming background automations, and more!
This post will cover basic Slack building blocks, and outline the construction of a Workflow that notifies a Slack Channel whenever a Conversation has been reopened by a Customer.
Creating a Slack App
Both Slack and Kustomer use an internet communication system called “Webhooks” to send and receive information, which can be leveraged to connect the two systems together. Slack’s own Webhook documentation is comprehensive and can help even beginners to get started.
The first steps in this process are detailed in Slack’s documentation (linked above). To start, you will need to create a Slack App in your Slack workspace (be aware that this may require some level of permission from your workspace admin). You can create your Slack app here: https://api.slack.com/apps
Be sure to choose a descriptive name and a workspace with which to associate your app, and then click “Create App”. Some Slack workspaces require apps to be approved by an administrator. You can still create your app, but you’ll need to request approval to install it.
After creating your app, you should be redirected to the settings page for your new app. If you already have an app, you may simply load into its settings via the app's management dashboard.
From here, find and open the “Incoming Webhooks” feature tab, and select “Activate Incoming Webhooks” toggle to turn it on.
Once Incoming Webhooks are enabled, the settings page should refresh with some additional options. Find and click the button marked “Add New Webhook to Workspace”.
Clicking this button will start the installation process for your new app! Pick a channel to which the app should post messages (keep in mind that you may end up posting many messages during testing, which other Slack users in the channel may see), before clicking to Authorize.
From here you should be sent back to your app settings, where you will see a new entry under the Webhook URLs for Your Workspace section. Your Webhook should look something like this:
https://hooks.slack.com/services/T00000000/B00000000/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
This URL is a basic Slack inbound Webhook, which will be used to receive information sent into Slack.
Kustomer Workflow
Workflows are Kustomer’s most advanced automations tool. Many users may find Workflows, at first, to be too complex to approach. Fortunately, Kustomer provides several resources for beginners who wish to learn the basics of Workflow structure. Please make use of the free lessons and live-recorded sessions available in Kustomer University.
The following steps will guide you through a basic Workflow that sends a message to your
Slack channel whenever a Conversation is reopened by a Customer. You can build and expand on the concepts and ideas found here to create your own custom integration.
Step 1: Trigger Step
Trigger App: Kustomer
Trigger Event: Conversation Updated
The specifics of your own Trigger Step may vary greatly, depending on the intended purpose of any revised integration. This particular Workflow will run whenever an existing Conversation receives an update
Step 2: Condition Step
Continue Only If
steps.1.changes.attributes.status.before
Equals
done
Add Condition “AND” Continue Only If
steps.1.changes.attributes.status.after
Equals
open
Add Condition “AND” Continue Only If
steps.1.changes.attributes.inboundMessageCount.after
Greater than
steps.1.changes.attributes.inboundMessageCount.before
The specifics of a Condition Step for any revised integration will certainly vary and be highly contextual to your own purposes. This Condition Step checks that the Conversation Update events included a status change from “done” to “open”, as well as a rise in the inbound message count
Step 3: Action Step
Action App: Kustomer
Action Event: REST API JSON
Uri: Insert your inbound Webhook from Slack here
Method: POST
Data:
{
“text”: 'A Kustomer Conversation has been reopened for Customer ID {{steps.1.customer}}: https://kustomer.kustomerapp.com/app/conversations/{{steps.1.id}}'
}Headers:
{
'Content-Type': 'application/json'
}Json: true
This Action Step is the important part! You can use it to send whatever text you like to your Slack Channel. You can even use handlebars to insert information or build a link.
You can always add more dynamic information to your message by including additional Workflow steps. If you wish to include the Customer’s name for instance, you will need to find the Customer by ID and interpolate the Customer’s name attribute in your Slack text.
Be sure to save your Workflow and turn it on (you may also wish to activate view logs for troubleshooting purposes). To test, you will need to reopen an existing Conversation by writing in as a Customer.
Creating a system of notifications in Slack can be incredibly beneficial to your day-to-day flow! For more advanced Slack options, please review Slack’s additional documentation on advanced formatting, posting replies and more! Try this out, or implement your ideas with customized Workflows, and as always, please reach out to the Kustomer Support team if you have any questions or need of assistance!