incident.io uses Credal to instantly spread internal knowledge across time zones

incident.io is an incident management platform that helps engineering teams coordinate on-call response, communications, and operational visibility during outages. Customers like Netflix, Etsy, and Skyscanner use incident.io to respond faster when critical systems fail.

As incident.io scaled its team across London, New York, and San Francisco, the company looked for practical ways to use AI to remove operational bottlenecks, starting with a simple but costly one: internal knowledge didn’t travel fast enough across time zones.

As incident.io grew, more product, engineering, and go-to-market work happened asynchronously across regions. A recurring pattern emerged: Engineers and sales teams asked questions in Slack about product behavior, integrations, or operational workflows but the people who knew the answer were often in a totally different part of the world. If a question was asked during US hours, the UK engineering team might already be offline. The result was that answers arrived a full workday later, slowing decisions, sales calls, and customer support.

This wasn’t a documentation problem. Indeed, the knowledge existed, but it was trapped in people’s heads and scattered across internal docs.

The team needed a way to make internal product knowledge available instantly, inside Slack, without waiting for the right human to be awake.

incident.io adopted Credal to connect Slack conversations directly to internal knowledge sources, so teams could get answers in real time.

Credal gave them a way to:

• Connect AI to internal engineering documentation and knowledge bases
• Answer questions directly inside Slack channels where work already happens
• Reduce dependency on specific subject-matter experts being online
• Turn existing internal docs into an always-available knowledge

Rather than creating a new workflow, Credal fit naturally into how the team already worked.

Slack-native product knowledge

incident.io embedded Credal into Slack channels like #product-questions, where engineers, sales, and support teams regularly communicate vital information about the product. Instead of waiting many hours for someone to respond, Credal provided immediate answers grounded in internal documentation. Credal is also used in sales-facing channels to answer common product and technical questions during live customer conversations, such as feature availability, security posture, or integration capabilities without requiring real-time engineering support.

In support channels, Credal helps surface known issues, troubleshooting steps, and internal runbooks. This allows support teams to respond faster to customer problems and reduces reliance on a small set of domain experts.

New engineers use Credal in channels like #eng-help to quickly understand internal systems, development patterns, and operational processes, reducing onboarding time and preventing knowledge from being locked in a few individuals’ heads.

Across all of these use cases, the biggest impact is on speed of decision-making. Teams can ask questions in Slack and get immediate answers, even when the relevant experts are offline. This removes an entire class of time-zone dependency and prevents delays that previously slowed deals, support responses, and internal operations.

‍Building Out More Ambitious AI Systems

At the same time, incident.io has been working on more ambitious AI systems, most notably an automated incident investigator that can analyze logs, traces, and metrics to suggest what likely caused an outage and how to fix it. Credal fits into this broader strategy by providing a low-risk way to embed AI into real workflows, allowing the team to build intuition and confidence before deploying more complex, mission-critical AI systems.

As Lawrence explains, incident.io’s approach is to start small and build momentum:

“Don’t try and do the most ambitious thing first… figure out how you can warm up and do smaller things that keep things fun.”

Removing time-zone disconnects has had a real and positive effect on customer-facing work. Sales and support teams no longer need to pause conversations or wait for engineering to wake up before moving forward. Instead, they can ask questions in Slack and get real-time answers, allowing them to respond to customers and prospects with confidence in the moment.

Credal has also helped incident.io unlock the value of its existing internal documentation. Information that previously lived across scattered docs and knowledge bases is now accessible at the point of need, turning static documentation into a living, searchable source.

Finally, because Credal operates directly inside Slack, adoption was easy. The team didn’t need to introduce a new tool or change established workflows. “Don’t try and do the most ambitious thing first… figure out how you can warm up and do smaller things that keep things fun.”

Have questions on the above or want to know how these apply these use cases more specifically to your needs? We’re happy to chat. Drop us a line at sales@credal.ai!