How We Use Slack at PayrollHero

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

We moved over from HipChat to Slack a while back and have quite enjoyed the change. While the two products seem similar from the outside, there is something about Slack that is awesome. We use it for everything. It has cut down our internal emails, we have opened channels to deal with our contractors & partners and we have automated a ton of functionality through it.

payroll singapore sg lead form For example, when a visitor comes to our website and fills in one of the led forms, the information from that form shows up in a few places so that it can be actioned immediately.

To the right is an example of what I’m referring to. Erlich comes to our website, fills in the lead form and sits back for our team to get in touch.

From there, the data from the lead form goes straight into our PipelineDeals account so that we have a record of the lead and can keep track of all interactions involved with it.

PipelineDeals also sends a message to our main email so that we are notified via email of the new lead.
pipelinedeals payroll We also have PipelineDeals tied into Zapier which pushes that data into the BD room of our Slack account. This notifies the whole team of the new lead so that anyone outside of the business development team is aware of what is happening on the lead front.
slack and payrollhero

Now the lead is being followed up with by our business development team, the whole PayrollHero team is aware of the new lead (or volume of leads) and if a conversation needs to happen, it will take place within Slack. Simple, but effective use of automation to keep us transparent and on top of our game.

Our others uses of Slack:

– Once a leave request is approved it goes from PayrollHero directly into Slack (via Travel Schedules channel)

– We have city specific channels so that we can talk about what is happening within that city for teammates currently there (Singapore, Manila, Whistler, Vancouver)

– We have contractor channels so that our contracts can interact directly with our team

– There is a reading list channel for shared articles of interest (used to be emailed, now shared there)

– Each department has a channel (BD, marketing, csh, dev, finance, etc)

There is much more happening through our Slack account but this gives you a good idea of how we use it.

How do you use Slack? Any tips for us? Let us know in the comments below.

10 Tools Your Startup Needs To Use

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Stephen Jagger

This post was originally posted on TechinAsia.com, a leading Southeast technology media property. The post can be found here – 10 startup tools you need for CRM, communication, and documentation

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At PayrollHero we are big believers in knowledge sharing. From pair programming to private online forums for open discussions about our business to sharing online, we believe that transparency and leaving artifacts behind is the best way to succeed. So in keeping with that, I thought I would share the 10 tools that we are using today at PayrollHero.

Communication:
HipChat – We use HipChat as our water cooler. We have multiple rooms setup so that we can keep the conversations on topic. From Business Development to Developers to Customer Service, each department of our business has a room to chat in. Plus, with the iOS app and alerts, our team can stay up to speed with the progress of the business. One of the neat things about HipChat is that you can integrate with other tools so that they update the HipChat rooms. For example, in our Developers room, it is common to see messages from Bugsnag, GitHub, CodeClimate and many others. In the Customer Service room Zendesk and Intercom contacts show up. It is a great way to keep on top of your business and the different departments.

Google Hangouts – Every morning at 7:37am PHT and 3:37pm PDT most of our team gathers for our standup meeting. Because we are situated in two locations, we do our daily standup meeting via Google Hangouts. Hangouts are stable, reliable and free enabling us to keep both offices in constant contact with each other. Outside of our standup meetings Google Hangouts are commonly used for department meetings, client support calls and sales calls.

Skype -Everyone should know Skype, but we use it quite a bit as some Google products have trouble in China. Skype enables our client happiness team to speak with clients, share their screens and demo the platform. Our business development team uses it for webinars as well as sales calls. Overall it is a reliable platform that helps us grow our business.

Asana – Asana is a task tracking system built for web and mobile designed to reduce email clutter within a workplace. We use it for tracking our engineering tasks, onboarding tasks and any group projects that we are working on.

Zopim – We switched over from SnapEngage to Zopim for the live chat on all of our marketing sites recently. We made the switch based on features and pricing and found that Zopim had all the features we needed at a lower cost that what we were paying before. (Zendesk just purchased Zopim)

CRM:
PipelineDeals – We moved over to PipelineDeals (from Highrise) recently as we were looking for a change in how we managed our leads, deals, contacts and clients. PipelineDeals is a great platform for B2B businesses that want an easy to use, slick interface that does not require tons of setup time. PipelineDeals plays nicely with our MailChimp account and our team instantly loved it. Plus their customer support has been quick and helpful. (Watch for PipelineDeals pushing more into Southeast Asia)

Intercom.io -I really like Intercom and how it lets us communicate not only with our clients who require support, but all of our clients. It gives us an in-depth dashboard to all activity on our platform and makes it really easy to communicate with our clients. Their automated, action trigged messages are really helpful and have changed the way we support our clients.

Zendesk.com –Zendesk is where we manage client support requests and tickets from Intercom that require more time to resolve. We used to use Zendesk alone, but added Intercom for its complete client view and the two platforms work nicely for our client happiness team. (My guess is that Zendesk is going to either do buy Intercom or replicate some of their features in the near future. Time will tell.)

Documentation:

Google Drive – Our whole world lives in Google Drive. We store our financials, employee docs, communal spreadsheets/documents, photos, videos, memos plus much more. It is a quick and easy way to keep everything in the cloud and searchable at a moments notice.

Expensify – Expensify is how we track all receipts that need to be reimbursed. We use the iOS app to take photos of the receipt, quickly document the details around the receipt and it stores it for quick reporting.

Bonus Tools – We are also playing with a couple tools to test how they workout within our world. They include Peak (see what people are working on), DropCam (to take a peek into each office) and Ghost (for release notes, trying instead of WordPress).

PipelineDeals Is Coming To Southeast Asia

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Stephen Jagger

Screen Shot 2014-04-01 at 7.49.45 PM We moved our sales CRM needs over to PipelineDeals a few months ago after we were introduced to the founder JP Werlin. We began using their platform to see how it compared to Highrise (which we were currently using) or Salesforce (which we were considering). We ended up moving to PipelineDeals as it is a smooth setup process, had all of the features we were looking for and was a cost effective option.

PayrollHero is a business to business software as a service platform focused on restaurants, retails and the BPO industry (outsourcing / office environments). We end up dealing with the CEO, COO, Head of HR, Head of Payroll, store managers and district managers as part of the sales process. PipelineDeals lets us manage these relationships, the potential deal amount, all of the correspondence plus much more.

Are you interested in checking out PipelineDeals for your business… signup here and use our referral code for 30 days free. Let us know what you think?
*Referral Code: PayrollHeroPipeline

As part of writing this post, I reached out to JP Werlin and asked him for 5 tips to get the most out of PipelineDeals, here is what he answered with:

Five tips to get the most out of PipelineDeals

1 – Use Page Tips

Page Tips are helpful hints that are available on every page in PipelineDeals. Click on the “?” icon at the top of the screen on any page in the app and click Page Tips to receive tips, support articles, and videos related to the page. This is a great way to learn about the features in PipelineDeals

2 – Save a Filter

It’s easy to filter and save lists in PipelineDeals to view custom reports of your data. To save a filter, click on the Advanced filter button on the Deals, People, or Companies tab and click to Save Filter. Saved filters are helpful for creating custom reports, contact or leads lists, and deal pipeline summaries. For more info, check out this helpful video.

3 – Download the iPhone or Android App

PipelineDeals has a dedicated iPhone and Android App that syncs seamlessly with your PipelineDeals account. These free mobile apps are great for accessing your data while you’re away from your laptop or desktop. Download these apps directly from the App Store or Google Play Store.

4 – Track Emails

PipelineDeals also makes it easy to track all of your communication in one place. With PipelineDeals email tracking features, you can track emails as activities using our simple BCC tracking feature. Add cc@pipelinedeals.com in the BCC field to any email and automatically track your emails as activities. Click this helpful article for more details.

5 – Create a Task Template

Task templates are a great way to automate custom workflows in the app. Use a task template to automate a series of todo’s like lead qualification, solutions development, or preparation for a presentation. With task templates, PipelineDeals makes it easy to develop custom workflows that will make your sales team more efficient.