Salesforce Wants Indian SMBs to Ditch WhatsApp for Slack

WhatsApp has become a convenient way for businesses to communicate with employees, customers, and partners. This is especially true for India, which boasts 550 million WhatsApp users and where 90% of consumers message at least one business on the platform weekly, per Rukam Capital. 

However, Salesforce believes that convenience comes with security concerns that could push enterprises towards dedicated workplace collaboration platforms such as Slack.

Salesforce is also seeing growing Slack adoption among small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India. According to Gourav Ray, RVP, Slack and Service, Salesforce India, SMBs are among the segments contributing the most to the company’s revenue in the country.

“Many enterprises are coming back to us because WhatsApp is not very secure. There have been a lot of personal data leaks. A large number of enterprises have given that as a major reason to move away from WhatsApp,” Ray tells AIM in an exclusive interview.

There has been a recent spike in security incidents involving the messaging platform. 

In June, CERT-In warned about a malware campaign targeting WhatsApp Desktop and Web users, with attackers using compromised accounts to distribute malicious attachments disguised as financial documents. Once opened, these files could give attackers remote access to systems, steal credentials and exfiltrate data. 

In August, India’s cybercrime agency I4C warned companies about a related account-takeover campaign targeting corporate executives and finance teams. Attackers used compromised WhatsApp accounts to impersonate senior executives and issue fraudulent fund-transfer instructions.

Operating System for Work

Salesforce is positioning Slack as a workplace collaboration platform. After spinning out an AI-powered version of its automated assistant Slackbot earlier this year, the company wants Slack to become a central layer that connects employees, applications, enterprise data, and AI agents.

On how Slackbot differs from ChatGPT or Claude, Ray explains that it draws on the context of conversations happening across an organisation, along with information from connected applications.

“Every conversation we have brings in some value for the organisation. What organisations struggle with is that this is usually lost because people are not able to find this data or information anywhere,” Ray explains.

According to him, Salesforce’s data layer and metadata provide the context required to make AI outputs deterministic, allowing enterprises to make business decisions and take action.

Ray says conversations across Slack channels, emails, and other connected applications often contain useful information that businesses struggle to find later. Slackbot brings this information together.

The platform has more than 2,600 native connectors, allowing employees to retrieve information across enterprise applications, including human resource management systems, customer relationship management platforms, and enterprise resource planning software.

For instance, employees can search across customer data, HR information, Workday, and Concur without switching between multiple applications.

Ray says digital-native businesses have been among the early adopters, partly because of Slack’s relatively intuitive interface and ease of deployment.

Salesforce is also seeing interest across fintech, logistics, travel, and transportation, including trucking companies where drivers are using Slack.

The Importance of SMBs for Slack

SMBs are emerging as an important customer segment for Salesforce in India, contributing the most to the company's revenue in India.

The company’s SMB Growth Kit, which it launched earlier this year, brings Agentforce Sales, Slack, and Tableau into a single platform. It aims to make Salesforce offerings easier for smaller businesses to adopt.

Ray notes SMBs are unlikely to invest in expensive platforms that take three to four months to implement. He says the toolkit follows a plug-and-play approach, allowing smaller customers to purchase the application using credit cards and start using it without extensive partner support.

Despite targeting smaller businesses, Ray acknowledges that Salesforce may not always be able to match the prices offered by smaller SaaS companies such as Zoho.

“There are a lot of competitors in the market. The willingness to pay is largely dependent on what customers get in terms of value. We mostly drive value conversations with our customers rather than compete on price,” he says.

AI Agents Build Sales Pipeline

Salesforce is also using AI agents internally to improve sales productivity and generate revenue. Ray says the company uses Agentforce and Slackbot to prepare employees for sales meetings, coach them on their pitches, and evaluate their performance.

Its AI coach assesses sales pitches against a predefined rubric, identifies missed points, and suggests improvements. It can also debrief employees after meetings and help frontline managers improve their teams' performance.

Salesforce also uses intelligent dashboards to monitor sales pipelines, identify deals that need attention, and flag potential risks.

Another application is Hunter, an agentic sales development representative that can reach out to prospects and conduct initial sales calls.

The company also uses its Help Agent, internally referred to as KC, to handle inbound customer calls when sales teams are unavailable.

The agent can answer queries, resolve issues, and record customer interactions.

Ray says the Help Agent has handled more than 5 million customer conversations and resolved nearly 70% of them.

For Salesforce, these deployments show how AI can help generate more revenue by reaching more customers, helping employees close sales and identifying business opportunities that might otherwise be missed.