As the fast-moving in-house digital marketing agency for Marriott International, Marriott Digital Services (MDS) is receiving Slack’s award for Excellence in Customer Service for leveraging Slack and Salesforce to streamline high-quality support, quickly triage inquiries and deliver timely, accurate answers fast.
Serving over 4,000 Marriott hotels, MDS builds websites, creates advertising campaigns, optimizes content and executes paid media, among other digital programs. When a hotel signs up for a digital project, the requesting teams typically have many questions. That is when MDS customer success agents step in.
Historically, agents had company context, training documentation and knowledge articles at their disposal to handle cases—especially those requiring quick answers, like client chat and SMS service cloud sessions. But there were clear gaps and many common questions without answers. To give agents easy access to CRM data on hotels and to empower them to collaborate on finding fast solutions, MDS brought in the global business and technology consulting partner Slalom to integrate Salesforce Service Cloud into Slack through the out-of-the-box app and custom integrations.
Today if agents need more help, they simply tap a button in Salesforce to create a swarm in a dedicated Slack channel, which brings in relevant team members automatically and cuts down on the back-and-forth of finding key players. If needed, they can seamlessly loop in subject-matter expert user groups to help expedite and answer niche questions. Leadership can also leverage the Slack swarming integration to review business areas and assess where they might need more support or training.
“Thanks to Slack and Salesforce, agents now say, ‘Look how quickly I got answers—I wasn’t waiting on someone to see a comment in their email inbox hours later.’”
Taking its services one step further, MDS created a unique Slack workspace that allows them to connect with 75 of the agency’s top hotel clients. This offers a direct line for clients to post questions and receive immediate responses, search for content, participate in surveys and chat among themselves in a forum setting.
To reduce context switching and free up time for continued customer support, MDS automates repeatable tasks and push notifications for items such as weekly meeting agendas and timesheets, right in Slack. The team also leans into cultural connection in channels, posting videos of teamwide calls, celebrating birthdays and nominating colleagues for internal awards through easy-to-use workflows.
No longer left searching for answers, agents have successfully tapped into the power of Slack to speed up ticket resolutions and reduce escalations, empowering MDS to deliver the exceptional customer experience its clients have come to expect.
