At Discngine, we're always looking to build a relationship of trust and transparency with our customers. By using the SCRUM & Agile methodologies, we're able to give our clients more control and influence on the final product. We've now decided to take our customer relationship one step further by creating our own Slack community - the Discngine User Group.

Slack is a really cool real-time team messaging app. The conversations can be held in both open and closed groups as well as in one-to-one discussions. We've been using it internally for over a year now. It quickly became extremely popular, to the point of reaching more than 300K messages in less than a year (with 35 users per week on average).

We use Slack to discuss all kind of work-related (and unrelated) topics, either in general channels or in smaller working groups. We also use it to ask for advice on a technical problem and to communicate with coworkers working on a different location (and sometimes the ones right next to us, but that's another story). The arrival of Slack allowed us to significantly reduce the amount of mails and simplify the communication within the company.

We now want to open this channel of communication to our customers and partners. Besides getting to know us even better, there are numerous benefits to this.

The benefits of a Slack community

It allows you to participate actively in a project

The real-time discussions allow you to get a quick answer to your question, directly from us here at Discngine. You can thus discuss technical questions with the developers or ask the product owner for more details on a specific feature.

Slack also allows you to use one of the private channels to discuss directly with your dedicated Discngine project team on more sensitive information such as requirements or prices.

It improves and simplifies your customer support

If you choose to use Discngine User Group for your customer support, the current system of emails and support tickets will be replaced by one simple feed where all information can be viewed and searched in an easy manner.

Slack’s real-time discussions make it very easy to collaborate, create clarity and refine requirements. By linking resources from other applications to the Slack discussion, all information can be found in one place.

It creates a closer relationship

Real-time conversations are usually more casual than the typical mail exchange. We hope that Discngine User Group will allow us to build a more personal relationship with you. We also hope that the direct access to us and the community conversations will create a friendly and amusing environment for your support.

It allows you to stay informed on news and events

Slack is also a very convenient way of staying up-to-date on our releases, product launches, webinars etc.

You might also want to inform us about important business news on your side. This is what the private channels are for!

It allows you to learn from others

As mentioned above, Slack gathers public and private discussions on the same platform. This allows people across different companies to discuss specific topics directly with us but also with each other. This is a perfect way to share tips and tricks, benefit from other people's questions (and our responses of course) and share ideas.

The Slack community is also a great welcoming for you who are new customers. It allows you to quickly get your questions and concerns addressed, and to understand what services are available for you.

How to join the Discngine User Group

Sign up here!

To join us on Slack, sign up here and we'll send you an invite to join the Discngine User Group.

New to Slack?

Check out this guide on getting started for new members.

The code of conduct

In order to create a welcoming, inclusive community around Discngine, we have set up a code of conduct for the Discngine User Group:

The Discngine User Group is dedicated to providing a safe, inclusive, welcoming, and harassment-free space and experience for all participants, regardless of gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, socioeconomic status, body size, ethnicity, nationality, level of experience, age, religion (or lack thereof), or other identity markers. Our Code of Conduct exists because of that dedication, and we do not tolerate harassment in any form.

The rules

To keep some order on the different channels, we also have set up 7 golden rules that we expect everyone to follow.

English is the only language used in the public channels
Everyone can invite users as long as they belong to a customer or partner organization
The customer email address is always hidden
Your nick name should be first name followed by the company name (or acronym). E.g. peter dng, justin az, matt pfe
Nobody is obligated to always answer right away
Only admins & owners can use the mass notification functions (@channel, @here, and @everyone)
Admin & owners should use mass notification wisely

Join our community!

Talk to you soon, on Slack :)

Images borrowed from Slack Help and Unsplash

We're starting a Slack community for our customers! Here's why.