I don't like Slack and I cannot lie.

It is where good data from your customers goes to die.

The search is limited. The data can't be pivoted. Before you make your next #channel you need to ask WHY?

A busy, frenetic Slack is the symptom of a business that hasn't designed its systems to drive its workflows and store information in a central place.

We need to get your rich data in a form. So every time it comes through the same and we can track it over time and not just each day.

Tracking the status of projects needs to live in a timeline or a kanban. Somewhere that treats dates with some respect. They matter.

The product went live with the wrong description because James missed the note someone sent him in Slack at 22:39 last night. Reality.

We are all up against it enough already - It is us and our finite, fleeting attention versus our mobile phones.

When you go into an application you want it to do one thing well.

Opening a Slack inbox to be hit with 20 notifications of varying importance but all shining the same shade of red isn't just inefficient, it is stupid.

If you rolled out Slack in your company and have more than 20 employees you need to write a user guide for how it should be used. No one has been trained and it is likely an absolute drain on everyone's attention and focuses. Some people will just ignore it but many won't feel comfortable doing that because they're worried they'll miss an important message.

Important, urgent or workflow-related communication doesn't deserve to live on a messaging app you've probably never really thought about optimising.