How Slack gives SHOPLINE a daily productivity boost
Since 2013, SHOPLINE has been helping more than 500,000 e-commerce merchants around the world market and sell their products.
At the heart of SHOPLINE’s success is its commitment to providing a seamless omnichannel experience, and that depends heavily on effective communication and speedy resolution of issues.
It’s the role of Eileen, Head of the Effectiveness Department, and her team to give SHOPLINE employees the tools they need to support this mission.
“My team helps our employees to be more efficient so they can successfully manage and distribute retail solutions,” Eileen says. “Critical to efficiency is communication, and this is where Slack plays a daily role.”
Resolving issues with Jira integration
Slack’s ability to integrate seamlessly with Jira has helped SHOPLINE resolve issues faster.
Before Slack, it wasn’t uncommon for more than 500 tickets relating to customer issues to sit unattended in Jira. That backlog limited the ability of engineers and project managers to resolve problems quickly.
“Before integrating Jira with Slack, communication on tickets felt chaotic, and we couldn’t measure our performance in any meaningful way,” says Eileen.
Now, issues logged in Jira are automatically pushed to a dedicated Slack channel, alerting the engineering and product teams instantly. That’s helped significantly reduce response times, often to less than 30 minutes. Disruption for customers is minimised.
Using Slack means SHOPLINE’s response and resolution times can also now be measured and benchmarked, allowing new goals to be set.
“We’ve shifted from passive Jira ticket-checks to near real-time responses in Slack, often within thirty minutes,” says Eileen. “It’s helping us deliver on our promise to merchants to respond to requests and resolve bugs faster.”
And it’s not only SHOPLINE’s merchant customers reaping the benefits. The Jira integration with Slack means engineers can focus more on coding and less on chasing messages across multiple platforms. The gain has been significant.
“Slack has optimised focus and seen a 30% improvement in engineers’ efficiency.”
“We’ve shifted from passive Jira ticket-checks to near real-time responses in Slack, often within thirty minutes. It’s helping us deliver on our promise to merchants to respond to requests and resolve bugs faster.”
Keeping employees informed, engaged and efficient
Slack channels are one of the key tools SHOPLINE uses to keep its employees up to date. Public channels are especially important in making sure information isn’t locked away in silos and hard to search.
“Unlike emails and other platforms we’ve tried, Slack can act as a knowledge base for our employees,” says Eileen. “It offers a level of organisational transparency that has hugely improved employee communication.”
Easy access and searchability make Slack the preferred way for SHOPLINE employees to communicate, helping put everything they need to do work in one place.
“Over 70% of daily communication is with Slack, including for one-on-one messages, group announcements, posting meeting notes and updates,” Eileen says.
For example, regular updates about new platform features and go-to-market strategies can be efficiently managed through dedicated Slack channels, which help keep different teams up to speed. These benefits extend beyond internal operations.
With Slack Connect, SHOPLINE seamlessly integrates working with its global merchant base—spanning Australia, Asia, the US, UK, and Europe—into its daily workflows, simplifying communication and resolving queries faster.
This simple and secure way of connecting helps SHOPLINE’s merchant relationships thrive and, in turn, helps those businesses succeed. As Eileen explains, “Slack’s reputation and ubiquity make it a fast and easy way for our teams to engage with customers. We can simply invite them to channels to take part in discussions, review updates and ask questions.”
Looking to a productive future with Slack
Even after using Slack as a productivity platform for many years, SHOPLINE’s employees aren’t done innovating with it yet, Eileen says.
“We are looking forward to enhancing Salesforce integrations to further support unified communications, and to further leveraging Slack as the valuable knowledge base our employees and customers can access quickly and easily.”
