Communication is the cornerstone of all good businesses. It’s important that all of your employees are on the same page when they’re working on projects together and it’s important that you can communicate your expectations to them efficiently. When communication breaks down, efficiency really suffers and your business is likely to fail. If you think that you’re having communication issues in your business, there are a lot of different ways to improve your situation like holding regular meetings or even investing in communications courses for you and your employees. But the easiest way to improve communication in your business is by implementing these pieces of technology.
Shutterstock Licensed Photo – By SFIO CRACHO
Video Conferencing
Email is such a great tool that your employees can use to collaborate on projects or send important pieces of information to one another, but there is a delay there. People aren’t always going to answer an email right away and if you’ve got 5 people working on a project and they’re all trying to communicate by email, things won’t always move very quickly. Ideally, getting everybody together in one room to discuss the project is the best way to go about it, but that isn’t always possible. If you can’t get everybody together, video conferencing is the next best thing. You should always make use of video conferencing and conduct meetings over video call rather than trying to organize things by email all of the time because people can respond right away and have a proper discussion.
Voice Over Internet Protocol
Most people are already familiar with VoIP, even if they don’t know the term. Skype, for example, is a popular example. Any system that allows you to make phone calls over the internet is a VoIP, and they’re incredibly useful for your business. If you don’t already have one in place, you should invest in a white label VoIP service. Video calls are one example of how you can use VoIP to improve communication but you can also do things like send voicemails direct to your email and make phone calls over broadband, which is cheaper than a standard landline. By integrating your phone systems, video calls, and email, you can create a communication network that is easily accessible by everybody whether they’re in the office or not.
Live Chat
Good communication is about instant connection between all employees at all times. A lot of businesses are already using live chat for customer service, but it’s a great internal tool as well. If your employees need to contact one another for any reason, they don’t need to wait until somebody has looked through their emails and written a reply, they can get an instant response. This is great because it allows your employees to give one another real time updates on work issues and they can also share their skill sets. If an employee needs help or advice on something, it’s easy for them to shoot off a quick message to somebody else in the office and get the information that they need.
If you can implement these pieces of technology in your business, you can foster the communication that you need to succeed.