The Slack Message You Remember at 2 A.M. 

(Three days too late, of course.)

We've all been there.

Slack is where decisions happen and where to-dos go to disappear. One “I’ll circle back” turns into a ghosted thread. A quick question buries a critical task.

That’s why Slack reminders are underrated power tools.

Built-in. Effortless. And if you use them right, they save you from follow-up shame and context-switching chaos.

Here’s how to use Slack reminders without adding yet another productivity app you’ll eventually abandon.

‍

Why Slack Reminders Are Essential for Support Teams

Customer support operates in a unique environment where timing is everything. A customer waiting three hours for a response has an entirely different experience from one waiting three days. Slack reminders help you address the challenges:

1. The escalation black hole: High-priority issues that get buried in busy channels
2. Follow-up fatigue: Forgetting to check back on pending issues
3. Handoff gaps: Critical details lost when shifting between team members or departments
4. SLA management: Missing response time commitments that damage customer trust
5. Context switching: Losing track of promises made to customers across multiple conversations

‍

How to Set Personal Slack Reminders for Customer Success?

As a support team member, personal reminders help you stay on top of your customer commitments and follow-up responsibilities. And there are two ways to get started with Slack reminders for yourself.

‍

Method #1: Slack’s /remind Slash Command

The /remind command becomes your customer success assistant, helping you track every promise and commitment you make.

Essential Slack Reminder Examples for Customer Support

You can use Slack reminders to maintain high customer trust, keep tickets moving, and hold your internal teams accountable. Here are a few examples: 

1. Daily Follow-Up for Open Tickets

Some tickets don’t need escalation. They just need consistency. This reminder is perfect for those in-between issues: not critical, but not closed. It ensures you’re checking in daily, keeping the customer updated, and signaling that their issue hasn’t been forgotten.

2. Internal Team Nudges on Escalations

When a fix is in progress but out of your hands, the worst thing you can do is go silent, especially with high-value customers.

This reminder is your polite, predictable way of keeping internal momentum alive. Instead of firing off a “Hey, any update?” message at random, you’re setting a scheduled nudge at a time that makes sense, without disrupting your dev team’s flow.

It keeps the thread warm, the issue top-of-mind, and your customer communication honest. Because “I just checked in with the team” hits differently than “Let me find out what’s going on.”

3. Scheduled Customer Deliverables

Not all support is reactive. Sometimes, it matters when you’re showing up before you’re asked, especially when you’ve promised something specific, like a usage report, performance summary, or integration update.

This reminder helps you deliver exactly what you said you would, exactly when you said you would. It’s small, but it builds immense trust, particularly with high-touch accounts that expect professionalism and follow-through.

4. Time-Sensitive Escalation Safeguards

When a VIP customer is waiting and the silence is stretching, every minute matters. This kind of reminder acts as a failsafe: if you don’t get the update, answer, or resolution you need in time, you’ve already set the next move in motion.

It’s handy when you’re working against an SLA clock or managing high-stakes accounts where expectations (and tensions) run high.

Set it the moment you send a check-in or handoff message. That way, if nothing comes back? You’re not stuck reacting; you’re ready to escalate, loop in a manager, and keep momentum on your side.

Method #2: The Later Feature for Customer Pipeline Management

The Later feature works excellently for managing your customer issue pipeline and planning your daily follow-up activities.

How Support Agents Can Use Later Effectively:

1. Morning planning: Use Later to review all your scheduled customer follow-ups for the day
2. Issue tracking: Create reminders for different stages of complex customer problems
3. Proactive outreach: Schedule reminders to reach out to customers before they need to contact you

How to Create a Reminder for a Slack Message?

In customer support, important information often comes through Slack messages from other departments, team leads, or internal systems. Message-specific reminders ensure critical customer-related information never gets lost.

Prime Use Cases for Message Reminders in Support:

1. Engineering updates: When developers share progress updates on customer-reported bugs
2. Management directives: Instructions about VIP customer handling or escalation procedures
3. Cross-team information: Product team messages about feature requests from customers
4. Internal escalations: Messages from other teams about customer issues requiring your follow-up

Step-by-Step for Customer-Critical Messages:

1. Spot a message containing important customer information
2. Click the three dots next to the message
3. Select "Remind me about this"
4. Choose timing based on when you need to act on the information

How to Set Up Channel Slack Reminders for Support?

Support teams thrive on coordination, shared processes, and collective accountability. Channel reminders help ensure your entire team maintains consistent, high-quality customer experiences.

Examples of Daily Operations Slack Reminders

Essential Daily Support Team Reminders:

1. /remind #customer-support "Check and respond to all Priority 1 tickets" every weekday at 8:30 AM
2. /remind #support-leads "Review overnight escalations and assign coverage" every morning at 8 AM
3. /remind #customer-support "Update customer status in CRM before EOD" every weekday at 4 PM
4. /remind #support-team "Check queue for tickets approaching SLA deadlines" every 2 hours during business hours

Examples of Weekly and Monthly Process Slack Reminders

Recurring Reminders for Support Team Health:

1. /remind #customer-support "Submit weekly customer satisfaction scores" every Friday at 3 PM
2. /remind #support-leads "Review team performance metrics and customer feedback" every Monday at 10 AM
3. /remind #customer-support "Update knowledge base with new customer issues from this week" every Friday at 2 PM
4. /remind #support-team "Monthly team retrospective - what customer issues could we prevent?" on the first Monday of every month at 2 PM

Examples of Customer Communication Coordination Slack Reminders

Ensuring Consistent Customer Outreach:

1. /remind #enterprise-support "Send proactive check-in emails to VIP accounts" every Tuesday at 11 AM
2. /remind #customer-support "Follow up on all pending customer callbacks" every day at 1 PM
3. /remind #support-team "Review and respond to customer social media mentions" every weekday at 10 AM and 4 PM

Advanced Customer Support Reminder Strategies

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are more than metrics. They're promises. And in customer support, breaking them isn't just a miss. It's a trust breach.

But here’s the thing: SLA breaches rarely happen because no one cares. They happen because no one noticed until it was too late.

That’s where Slack reminders come in. With the right system in place, you can build a lightweight early warning system that catches issues before they escalate.

For example, you can set this Slack reminder halfway into the SLA window. It gives you time to respond, escalate, or get context before the pressure’s on:

Another example could be a channel-wide Slack reminder that keeps your entire team in the loop and makes SLA reviews part of your operating rhythm, especially in fast-moving queues.

How to Effectively Manage and View Customer-Centric Slack Reminders?

As customer issues multiply, your reminder dashboard becomes mission-critical for customer success. This is where Slack Later shines.

With one click, you can see all your upcoming reminders. Every follow-up, escalation, or check-in you’ve queued up for yourself or your team. When used well, it turns Slack into a lightweight ticker tracker, helping you stay proactive without bouncing between tools.

‍

Prioritization in the Later Dashboard:

As discussed before, the Slack Later tab is where all your reminders live, but not all reminders are created equal. To make it truly useful, you need to prioritize what shows up there. Think of it as triage for your attention.

Here’s a simple way to sort your reminders, fast:

• Critical customer issues: These are the non-negotiables. Reminders tied to VIP accounts, time-sensitive escalations, or SLA risks should always get top billing. These tickets can make or break trust, internally and externally.
• Standard follow-ups: Next up: the essential, ongoing work. These reminders keep your support motion moving. A few examples are customer check-ins, status updates, and scheduled deliverables. Important, but not (yet) urgent.
• Process reminders: Finally, the behind-the-scenes glue. These are your internal coordination reminders—CRM updates, coverage planning, and queue reviews. They matter for team health and operational excellence, but can often shift slightly if needed.

‍

What Are Some Missing Features in Slack Reminders/Later?

Reminders and Later are great features that help Slack users become more productive. However, there are a few features that customer service teams wish they already had but don't. Read on to find out.

1. Automatic reminders for messages requiring response: Slack cannot auto-set reminders based on customer messages that need responses, as it doesn't recognize the distinction between customers and agents or customer-generated questions.‍

2. Message urgency recognition: Another limitation is Slack's inability to gauge the urgency of a message and adjust reminder delivery speed accordingly.‍

3. Multi-recipient and external tool reminders: Slack does not provide the option to send reminders to multiple individuals or integrate with external tools like PagerDuty for streamlined notifications.

Would you love to get these features? No worries, we've got you covered!

‍

Using Reminders on Slack Effectively with ClearFeed

Reminders in Slack can significantly aid in staying organized, especially when your job constantly warrants adaptability. Yet, if you're using these reminders solely for routine tasks, you might not be tapping into the full value of this functionality. Say hello to ClearFeed, a Slack-integrated app that empowers you to unlock the potential of reminders, enabling you to manage customer operations better and amplify customer experiences.

With ClearFeed’s Slack alerts, you can:

1. Keep an eye on all your Slack channels, reminding you of open requests and pending customer responses.
2. Send reminders about unanswered questions directed at you and any pending responses from others.
3. Configure SLA breaches in real time based on response priority and daily summaries of pending action items.

By utilizing these features, you can ensure teams stay on top of their communications and incoming requests, improving the overall efficiency of customer service operations. Want to see how we can help you? Get in touch with us today.

‍

FAQs

Q1. Can You Set Reminders in Slack?

Ans: Yes, you can set reminders in Slack, which helps you remember to do certain tasks. You can use the shortcuts menu to set reminders for yourself or for a channel or the More actions menu to set reminders for specific messages.

Q2. How to Use Slack Reminders?

Ans: To use Slack reminders effectively, simply type /remind followed by what you want to be reminded of and when. You can set reminders for yourself, someone else, or a channel. For example: /remind me to check email in 2 hours or /remind #channel Lunch meeting at noon Friday are all valid reminders that Slackbot can help you manage.

Q3: How to Cancel Slackbot Reminders?

Ans: To cancel Slackbot reminders, you'll typically go to the message from Slackbot about the reminder, where you can find options to complete, delete, or snooze it for later right within that message. Managing reminders directly through interactions with Slackbot makes it simple to keep your reminders list relevant and up-to-date.

‍