The hustle and bustle of business can see even the best of us fall behind on our responsibilities once in a while. Whether it’s the last meeting on a Friday you forgot to cancel or the important data you intended to file for first thing on Monday morning and didn’t, sometimes, a hectic workload can cause us to slip up.
One area that we tend to let people down the most in is communication. The rough examples given above along with plenty of other workplace scenarios can be solved quite easily with just a quick message. Proper internal communication isn’t just important for the smooth running of your business – it’s key to keeping your employees happy too.
Instant messaging apps for businesses play a hugely important role in ensuring effective communication and can solve a lot of the issues that come with counting solely on email correspondence. Some people have concerns about using them, whether it’s due to privacy or trust reasons, which means missing out on the chance to maintain effective communication internally.
Read on for answers as to why business-grade instant messaging is key to improving the efficiency of your operations and the reasons that all companies should use it.
Don’t Use Personal Apps For Business Reasons
Turning to the likes of WhatsApp to communicate with staff is a dangerous blend of business and pleasure. One thing business owners worry about with instant messaging apps is that conversation quickly becomes unprofessional and off-topic. Using an app that you speak with family and friends on is likely to set this tone for employees and they may spend time replying to non-work-related messages since they’re already on there speaking to colleagues.
Using business instant messaging apps like Spike means you can bring all communication into one location, including email, and host group conversations with staff while collaborating on different projects. Plus, being able to send voice messages, track tasks, and share meetings through the built-in calendar means a lot of responsibilities can be consolidated into one easy-to-use platform.
Relying Solely On Email Isn’t Reliable
The email will always have its place in business, and rightly so. Depending on the service you use, the ability to organize and personalize the way you receive emails is always improving. Gmail, for example, works great for businesses because accounts have large storage capabilities, and it works seamlessly with other services in the Google Workspace.
But on its own, email can’t be relied on to keep up with the fast pace of an office environment. People need information right now and it’s easy to neglect what’s coming through your inbox when you’re working at full speed on an important task. Business messaging apps make communication as quickly as it should be, and can be easily added to mobile devices for keeping up with work on the move. What’s more, email can be added too.
Proper Encryption Is Key
Trust plays a large role in every decision we make, especially when it comes to the companies we choose to protect our confidential business information. Even when it comes to the meetings we hold online, using the likes of Zoom to host them can open you up to being hacked. Despite being so popular, Zoom’s infrastructure just hasn’t kept up with the demand for its services, and experts are warning that it doesn’t hold up on privacy or security.
Business messaging apps like Slack and Spike are focused almost entirely on business, and that means, down to the way they’re designed and the encryption that protects them, they’re focused entirely on delivering precisely what businesses need to function without hacking concerns.
Engagement Is Important
Keeping employees engaged with their roles and feeling like a part of the team breeds productivity, something all business owners want. Email communication can be quite stiff and has an unshakable formality to it. This isn’t great for enabling staff members to get to know one another and speak from their personalities. Plus, every good boss should know that praising hard work is important, but with a mountain of tasks to complete, finding the time to give that praise or remembering to do so isn’t always so simple.
Complimenting someone’s work, and highlighting an important milestone in an employee’s career is as simple as sending a quick IM when you incorporate business messaging into your workplace. Also, it allows you to share this praise with the whole team at the same time, ultimately improving their engagement with others too. And, since it’s not via email, you don’t have to sound so stiff!
