Wealthbox CRM Notifications in Slack
Today we issued a press release and a tweet to announce that Wealthbox CRM is now integrated with the messaging app called Slack. Advisor teams using Slack can now get notifications on CRM activity happening in Wealthbox. In other words, CRM updates in the activity stream of Wealthbox can now flow into the communication stream of Slack. 
Advisors can customize the notifications they wish to instantly appear in Slack. (We’re releasing this Slack integration as part of Wealthbox version 1.9 that will introduce “advanced reporting” capabilities, due out this month.)
UPDATE: InvestmentNews has covered this story. Read the article here.
What is Slack?
Slack is a real-time messaging platform that allows coworkers to share messages and files and collaborate as a team. Its tagline: Be less busy. Business teams of all types use it as a tool to enhance coworker collaboration and sense of connectedness, all the while happily reducing interoffice emails. Slack allows a team to configure the app with customized communication channels, private groups and direct one-to-one messaging. High fidelity audio and screen-sharing features are also available with one click in Slack for a richer communication experience beyond the app’s core chat messaging functionality.
“To improve communication with colleagues, advisers may want to try out Slack.”
As a messaging platform and communications hub, teams effectively “live in” Slack and integrate productivity software apps to get various notifications – all from within Slack. Everything is in one place. Users can also easily invite people from outside their team to join a Slack group to collaborate on a project. Slack even has a “Compliance Export” feature for regulated industries like financial services where team managers can access their message history, including private group and direct messages. (See this article on Slack’s attention to security, privacy, and compliance.)
To our knowledge, Wealthbox is the first CRM vendor to have a direct integration with Slack. Based in San Francisco, Slack, launched just two years ago, is now one of the so-called “billion dollar unicorns” with over 1 million users. (Team Wealthbox uses Slack and has since this messaging app launched. We have multiple notification channels and chat groups related to sales, marketing, customer support, product design, engineering, etc.)
Wealthbox + Slack: Commonality in User-Experience Design
Similar to Slack, the hyper-simple user experience of Wealthbox CRM is designed for communication and collaboration atop the CRM data management. Built with a social network-style activity stream to view and collaborate on CRM activity, Wealthbox also has @-mentioning, commenting, liking, and even emojis – like Slack! – all related to CRM activity. 
Built with “web socket” technology, all Wealthbox users on an advisor team have a live, persistent connection at the browser level to be updated with notification alerts in real-time.
“The integration of Wealthbox and Slack provides a seamless and enhanced user experience between CRM activity and team communications at our firm.”
Under the polish of the Wealthbox interface, there’s simplicity in product functionality and even playfulness we imbued in the product design. Dull, emotionless CRM software it’s not. Slack has this design aesthetic too and it was a natural for us to develop this partner integration. Modern, sleek apps like Slack and Wealthbox – even our interfaces are similar – represent a new generation of consumerized (read: no training required), collaborative business software and we’re happy to introduce this stream-centric integration into the wealth management market.
How Financial Advisors Can Use Slack with Wealthbox
With this release, Wealthbox users can select from 22 different CRM notifications (e.g. alerts for client onboarding, task assignment, workflow completion, inbound lead, new opportunity, scheduled event, etc.) that are sent from Wealthbox to Slack to keep a team in the loop and respond to actionable information. The color of the Wealthbox icons (e.g. blue for contacts, orange for tasks, yellow for notes, etc.) are similarly displayed in the Slack notifications.
Color-coded CRM update notifications in Slack, from Wealthbox.Attention Wealthbox users: To connect Wealthbox to Slack see this Q&A in our Help Center to quickly start selecting which channels in Slack you wish to receive notifications from Wealthbox.
Hope you like the Slack integration! Stay tuned for the release of Wealthbox version 1.9 and soon thereafter, Wealthbox 2.0 with our public API.
Advisors: Don’t yet have a Wealthbox account? Seriously? We’ll cut you some Slack for Slacking off but now’s the time to sign up in 15 seconds and start your free trial and pick up the Slack!
Some reactions…
This is a big deal. All the top tech firms use Slack as do many robos. Congrats @Wealthbox https://t.co/vjPZ4FXLE9
— Steve Sanduski (@SteveSanduski) August 6, 2015
Wealthbox is ahead of the curve with their #Slack integration. https://t.co/G6sa06nV1w
— Steve Lockshin (@OpenAdvisor) August 6, 2015
.@Wealthbox, a CRM for advisers, is bringing @SlackHQ to its platform to help adviser teams communicate seamlessly: http://t.co/z9bSjyqg06
— InvestmentNews (@newsfromIN) August 5, 2015
.@Wealthbox CRM + @SlackHQ chat integration = boon for #RIA productivity; “includes compliance export”: http://t.co/rHsH39z55X @malito_ali
— Chris Stanley (@RegCap) August 5, 2015
Congrats to @JohnRourke and team at @Wealthbox on their @SlackHQ integration! http://t.co/s24wyYcRwk
— Jud Mackrill (@JudMackrill) August 5, 2015
