ServiceBell Slack Alerts: Best Practices & Common Mistakes

Here are the best practices for setting up critical Slack alerts that your reps actually want to receive:

Daniel Ternyak

December 5, 2023

Here’s the brutal truth:

If your reps get TOO many pointless Slack alerts…

They’ll just stop caring about them. They’ll get “alert blindness” and become become desensitized. Causing them to ignore important alerts for VIP website visitors.

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If you don’t want a leaky pipeline — don’t desensitize your reps with constant Slack alerts for unqualified visitors. Here are the best practices for setting up critical Slack alerts that your reps actually want to receive:

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The Basics of ServiceBell Slack Alerts

ServiceBell alerts are notifications that let your reps know when a specific visitor (based on CRM data, behavior, and demographics) is visiting the website. They help your reps quickly pounce on high-priority visitors and prospects.

Most alerts are made up of 3 things:

Property: This refers to a specific characteristic of a visitor. For example: 'URL', 'Known Visitor', ‘Target Account’.
Condition: This sets the criteria under which the property is evaluated. Conditions can be simple expressions like 'Equals', 'Contains', 'Starts With', 'Greater Than', 'Less Than', etc.
Value: This is the specific data point or status that the property must match for the alert to be triggered. It could be a string of text like 'Contract Sent', a numerical value, or a boolean indicating whether a condition is met, such as 'True' for a prospect having an open deal.

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By combining these rules using AND/OR logical operators — you can create highly precise alerts that get triggered under very specific triggers. For example:

Alerts can also be triggered by routing rules and journeys.

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Alert Blindness: The #1 Way to Miss VIP Prospects

Alert blindness occurs when sales representatives are bombarded with a high volume of notifications, to the point where they become desensitized to these alerts.

Alert blindness will cause your reps to miss high-priority alerts for VIP visitors — because they’ll just assume it’s another alert for an unqualified visitor.

If not avoided, alert blindness will DESTROY your reps’ ability to pounce on hot prospects.

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7 Practical Tactics to Avoid Alert Blindness

1. Only Send Alerts for High-Priority Visitors

Focus where it counts. Use CRM insights to discern which visitors are worth an alert. Pair it with Clearbit/6sense to unveil the hidden gems among your visitors — your VIPs.

2. Create a Feedback Loop for Measuring Alert Usefulness

Empower your reps to give their take on each alert. This feedback is gold for refining the alert system to filter out the fluff and keep the gold.

This can be as simple as letting your reps rate alerts in Notion using a 5-star system.

3. Avoid Overlapping Alerts Like The Plague

Clutter is the enemy. Ensure that alerts from different sources aren't doubling up.

One source, one alert, zero confusion.

4. Only Trigger Alerts ONCE Per Visitor Session

For alerts triggered by journeys, ensure they are triggered only once per visitor session.

So your reps aren’t pinged over and over again for the same visitor repeating an action.

5. Route Alerts to Specific Reps Based on CRM Data

Send alerts directly to specific reps (instead of user groups) by routing them to their contact owners, target account owners, deal owners, or by selecting specific reps as the alert target.

6. Let Your Reps Tweak Alerts Meant Specifically for Them

When setting up individual alerts for specific reps — allow those reps to tweak the alerts themselves. They know themselves best.

7. Measure KPIs for Individual Alerts

Measure specific alert KPIs (such as the conversion rate of visitors who trigger these alerts), so you can eliminate low-performing alerts that just add noise.

You can do this by setting up alerts within journeys and conducting A/B tests on different triggers=/conditions. Letting you see which triggers/conditions give your reps the most qualified alerts.

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