Serving more than 38 million shoppers in ten markets across Asia-Pacific, ShopBack is a leading shopping, rewards, and payments platform which specialises in cash back, vouchers and deals.
“We want to start and end people’s shopping experiences on the ShopBack platform,” says San Wai Oo, ShopBack’s Chief Technology Officer.
Before Slack, ShopBack didn’t have a collaboration tool that kept the company’s conversations, files and tools in one place. Some teams were using a mixture of email and WhatsApp. Meanwhile, ShopBack’s product, design and engineering teams were using Slack and loving the productivity gains that came with it.
“Slack is easier for collaboration, transparency, security, privacy and compliance,” Oo says.
Eliminating confusion when the clock’s ticking
If there’s an incident on ShopBack’s site, every second matters in getting it rectified.
Before Slack, this process was a time-consuming and stressful one. Since ShopBack was using multiple tools, no one was quite sure who was using what platform and where to go when looking to connect with someone.
“The problem of using multiple platforms and tools is that it’s really hard to find the right people at the right time,” says Oo.
“We wanted to stop wasting time trying to find the right person, working out if they’re using Slack and trying to reach them quickly,” he says.
Now with Slack, ShopBack is improving collaboration and productivity across the business.
“The teams no longer have to figure out how to reach out to someone when there’s an issue. We’re not wasting time trying different ways to reach someone. It’s straight to Slack to get to the right person right away,” says Oo.
ShopBack is also experiencing huge gains when it comes to meetings. Before Slack, employees were wasting precious time in meetings and stand-ups designed to update about work in progress and company announcements. Now using Slack, ShopBack’s employees can quickly share updates asynchronously thanks to an automated reminder.
“Slack has replaced daily stand-ups, saving between 30 and 45 minutes every day. That’s a huge amount of time saved over the weeks and months that we’re able to spend on improving our offering to customers.”
“Slack has replaced daily stand-ups, saving between 30 and 45 minutes every day. That’s a huge amount of time saved over the weeks and months that we’re able to spend on improving our offering to customers.”
Replacing meetings and saving employees’ time
ShopBack has seen massive growth since its launch in 2014 and Slack has helped enable that growth by connecting ShopBack’s people, processes, documents and conversations all in one place. Even better, Slack’s search functionality means that all information is accessible to everybody at the same time and context is only a search away.
At ShopBack, transparency and collaboration are highly valued. Every team has its own public team channel, which helps to promote open communication and increases the sense of ownership over projects.
“Everyone is on the same page and it’s so much easier and quicker to get things done,” says Oo.
Sharing company updates and process information is simpler too. That’s because Slack enables immediate feedback and responses from all employees.
“Whether it’s policy changes, announcements from leadership or other kinds of updates—we know every team is receiving the information in real-time. Even better, Slack makes it easy for anyone to reply.”
That visibility of leaders and two-way conversation helps create a culture of transparency and allows everyone to feel like their voices are being heard, says Oo.
The teams no longer have to figure out how to reach out to someone when there’s an issue. We’re not wasting time trying different ways to reach someone. It’s straight to Slack to get to the right person right away.
Harnessing integrations to automate processes
Oo sings the praises of the many integrations that help automate processes. The ease of automation, combined with ShopBack’s proactivity in seeking out technologies or solutions to increase effectiveness, has created a recipe for success.
For example, the team uses Slack Workflows—no-code automations that turn complex processes into simple, standardised avenues to answers—to streamline and automate tasks.
Employees also love Slack Huddles—lightweight and audio-first way to communicate inside a Slack channel or direct message—for quick approvals, discussions or a virtual tap on the shoulder. “We hop onto a Huddle, discuss what we need to discuss, and then get back to it.”
No more pressure to talk for 30 minutes simply because that’s how long the meeting is scheduled for — employees can resolve issues on the fly.
Having a dispersed workforce, Slack also allows ShopBack’s employees to easily collaborate across locations and time zones. “Because I can schedule messages, it’s easy to align tasks and communications with other team members who may be working asynchronously where their personal schedule or time zones don’t naturally align,” he says.
“Once I’ve scheduled my messages, I can continue working on other important tasks, knowing they’re set to go out at the appropriate time.”
ShopBack finds Slack Connect—a secure way to communicate and collaborate externally—helps it create strong connections with its customers and partners too. “We use Slack Connect with nearly all of our important partners, such as critical infrastructure providers. If there are any issues, the team can immediately get in contact with them.”
“Slack Connect has helped us strengthen our relationship with partners that we depend on and work closely with. It makes communication and collaboration with cross-company contacts so much easier,” says Oo.
