How Clay uses Rootly to streamline incident management.

Slack threads worked, until they really didn’t

Before Rootly, Clay was relying on Slack threads to manage incidents. That felt good enough at first. But once the team hit a few real incidents, the cracks showed fast. In one outage, the app went down and discussion split across four different Slack threads in separate channels. Information was lost, updates were missed, and people wasted time bouncing around trying to piece together what was happening.  

That was the turning point. Clay did not just need messages flying around faster. It needed a system that could centralize communication, reduce confusion, and give teams one source of truth during stressful moments. Rootly became the answer because George had seen it work at a previous company and knew it could bring structure where Slack alone could not. Within a few weeks, Clay had started rolling it out.  

“We thought Slack threads were good enough until a real outage showed us the limits. Once information started scattering across channels, it was obvious we needed a proper incident system.” — George Dilthey, Head of Customer Support

Clay needed one place for communication, ownership, and customer updates

The biggest requirement was centralized communication. But the deeper issue was broader than just internal coordination. Status page updates were inconsistent because it was unclear who owned them, and during incidents the support team was stuck copying and pasting the same responses into many separate customer conversations.  

With Rootly, Clay built a custom Intercom integration that triggers a ticket when an incident starts, making it much easier to handle one-to-many communication. That changed the support burden immediately: updates became more cohesive and streamlined, and the team says it saved significant time and effort.  

This is one of the strongest parts of the Clay story. Rootly was not just an engineering workflow purchase. It became a cross-functional operating layer connecting engineering, support, status-page comms, and customer communication into one repeatable process.  

“The biggest win was getting communication into one system. Internally and externally, everyone now has a clearer picture of what’s happening and what needs to go out.” — George Dilthey, Head of Customer Support

Rootly helped Clay expand what counts as an incident

One of the most interesting parts of Clay’s story is that Rootly changed how the company defines an incident. Historically, incidents meant the app was down or a major part of the product was affected. But once Clay had better tooling for one-to-many communication, that definition expanded. Now the team can trigger incidents anytime a customer-facing issue requires coordinated communication at scale.  

That matters a lot for Clay because it integrates with more than 75 providers. When one provider goes down, Clay may not be able to fix the root problem directly, but it still needs to manage customer expectations and keep teams aligned. Rootly gave Clay a much better operational model for those moments. Instead of treating dependency issues as vague support noise, the team can now run a structured response with clear communication.  

“Rootly pushed us to rethink incidents more broadly. If we need coordinated one-to-many communication, that’s enough reason to kick one off and manage it properly.” — George Dilthey, Head of Customer Support

Consolidation mattered as much as incident response

Another strong angle in Clay’s story is platform consolidation. George says Rootly was a “no-brainer” in part because it covered more than just incident coordination. At his previous company, Rootly was paired with PagerDuty, but at Clay the team was able to consolidate onto Rootly’s on-call system. The same was true for the status page, where pulling everything into one system made the workflow much simpler.  

Clay also considered building something in-house, which fits the instincts of a fast-moving startup. But after briefly experimenting, the team concluded it was not worth the effort. They needed a real system, not a fragile approximation. That decision is important in the narrative because it shows Rootly winning not only against process chaos, but also against the temptation to stitch together a “good enough” internal solution.  

“We looked at building something ourselves, but it became obvious very quickly that we needed a real system. Consolidating incident response, on-call, and status communication in Rootly was the right call.” — George Dilthey, Head of Customer Support

Better structure made the whole team feel more prepared

Since rollout, Clay says the incidents they have handled have mostly been lower severity, such as integration issues, but even those were enough to prove the value. The engineering team feels much better prepared, and the process is now described as clean and structured instead of chaotic. When an incident happens, people know how they will be notified, who is involved, what the severity is, and what language should be used for updates.  

That readiness is the real story. Rootly did not just make incident response more organized. It gave Clay confidence that the next bigger incident will be handled in a much more disciplined way. The team says the difference versus just a month earlier was huge.  

Implementation was fast, and support stood out

Clay’s implementation was relatively quick, and George specifically calls out the support from the Rootly team as a differentiator. He says Rootly helped them build the internal case before they even signed, offered full team training, and even had the CEO and co-founder join their Slack channel to check in during the process. That level of support helped Clay feel like it had the full Rootly team behind the rollout.  

This is a useful proof point for the refreshed story because it reinforces a broader theme: Rootly was not just software Clay bought. It felt like a guided implementation that helped the team mature quickly.  

Quick fire round: Clay rates Rootly

• 5/5: Implementation speed
• 5/5: Slack experience
• 5/5: Cross-functional communication
  
• 5/5: Consolidation value
• 5/5: Incident readiness

Clay’s story highlights fast implementation, strong vendor support, centralized communication, streamlined status-page and customer updates, consolidation of on-call and status tooling, and a much cleaner response process overall. Those are strong signals of high satisfaction across rollout, usability, and business value.