Email was introduced as an automated replacement of paper-based letters, notes, and external communication. And it did its job perfectly. But now email is broken, since it is being used for the activities it is not designed to, like real-time communication and remote collaboration at work.
Advanced technology provides new ways to have discussions and conversations, including one-to-one as well as a team. Enterprise messaging app addresses the ineffectiveness of email by sky-rocketing the speed of communication and allowing people to join a conversation anywhere, anytime. On the other hand, enterprise messaging apps help break down communication silos that email create, by making communication more open, dynamic and inclusive. It is important for all teams and is known to increase the response time for a query with an added advantage of reduced email volume.
Whether you are already using an enterprise chat app at your workplace or planning to adopt one, read on to know 8 must-haves for every enterprise messaging app must offer to help teams stay connected and improve their productivity.
#1. File Attachments and Links
Team communication entails sharing resources. With the growing predominance of cloud storage in the industry today, document and link sharing are turning out to be a critical success factor for enterprise messaging apps – helping teams quickly get the information required. And, in contrast to email, enterprise messaging apps help the businesses make resources and information accessible to everyone rather than being submerged in the overflow of emails.
#2. Adaptable Deployment Choices
As more organizations adopt the BYOD trend, enterprise messaging apps must support the OS (operating systems) that are commonly used by businesses, and devices that employees use including mobile phones, tablets, laptops and smart watches. In addition, employees today expect everything to carry the same experience of messaging that consumer apps provide. Hence, enterprise messaging apps must provide a similar experience, but one that is personalized to the requirements of business conversation. This turns out to be even more essential for teams who work remotely as it helps them stay connected on the move.
At the back end, enterprise messaging apps must provide deployment alternatives to incorporate numerous security needs. Though many companies prefer to host their enterprise chat framework on the cloud, those that are in sternly delimited industries or geographies should choose to host it on-premise. An effective enterprise mobility solution should have both on-premise and cloud deployment to allow the organizations chooses the model that suits perfectly to their requirements.
#3. Searchable Contacts
Most of us might have experienced the irritation of trying to find some information from the heap of emails. Perpetual chats with searchable contacts help you maintain track of conversations, files and links shared so you can easily check the information later. Also, group chats make it easy for everyone to keep posted, irrespective of their location and time.
Bringing the new teammates on track is important to any business. If you use email, key information can get hidden and be difficult to locate. Tracking this down can be time-taking and costly too. Enterprise messaging apps help address these issues by offering access to the chat history so that teammates can locate background and context quickly.
#4. Audio/Video Calls
Let’s be honest, nothing can supplant direct communication. Work would be very simpler if everybody was situated in the same office. In any case, companies are distributed worldwide, teams are scattered, and working with contractors, partners and clients over the road or over the sea is an ordinary piece of business now. By making it less demanding for groups to sort out, work together and convey around shared work, group chat systems can help restructure the process. Video calling is a critical aspect.
#5. It’s all about building connections
Teams become stronger when they feel associated and videos is an important element in that. This is critical not just for teams isolated by a large number of miles who might never at any point meet personally, additionally for those only a couple of miles away, where enhanced efficiency is measured in spared minutes, prompting hours or days after some time.
#6. Integrations
Being the key source of communication in an organization, the enterprise messaging app must provide integrations to other popularly used applications by the companies. Integrations pull data from different frameworks into a common platform that helps keep teams work efficiently, decreases the risk of missing vital upgrades and spares time from the need to open numerous applications. Integrations, likewise, permit clients to push data to different frameworks, which implies you can do lightweight work in an enterprise messaging system without opening another application.
#7. Real-Time Notifications
Enterprise communication systems that offer social features, make it simple for teams to stay associated and keep the right individuals aware of present circumstances, paying little heed to where they are. Personalized notifications help clients get alerts from the groups and individuals most critical to them, which helps slice through the commotion of data accessible and concentrate on the updates that are important.
It additionally encourages quicker decision making, unlike email. Clients can simply keep abreast of critical updates that may somehow or another lose all sense of direction in their inbox, so they don’t need to always check their email or check different applications for notifications.
#8. Emoticons
The flood of millennials in the work environment and the ascent of business communication apps have offered a route to another standard for work environment communication that is less formal, more lively and less hierarchical. Emoticons have a special place in this movement. Not just do they infuse a little fun and liveliness into the official discussions, they help construct kinship and organizational culture. For organizations with a largely remote team, this gets to be fundamental.
Final Thoughts
While email may be the most common technology used as a part of the workplace today, it is absolutely not the most productive. How everything adds up is that email is being utilized for things it was not intended to do: real-time collaboration and instant messaging. These two tasks are at the focal points of all team communication. New workplace communication apps now exist that all the more proficiently encourage these activities, returning email to its planned part as a notification means as opposed to a place to talk about and carry out work.
Images: “a young businessman using a smartphone in the office/Shutterstock.com“
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