Email used to reign supreme as the preferred method of communication. Prior to that, it may have been the phone or even a fax machine.
These days many companies are leaving both forms of communication behind in favor of quicker and more robust methods of communicating. Chat applications and artificial intelligence tools are transforming the way businesses talk with their customers and employees.
Is your business ready to communicate more effectively both internally and with clients, customers, and outside vendors?
Chat Applications
Slack
The clear winner in the chat application game right now is Slack. With a robust free version, it is easy to get users into the system.
Slack allows you to invite users that are not in your organization so everyone can be on the same page, even if they are not an internal employee. Slack also integrates with several of the most popular applications to make it a system that can communicate on several levels.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft has been developing its own robust chat application: Teams.
Teams can be integrated with other Office 365 apps like Word, Excel, and Outlook. With Teams, you can easily share and chat about specific files, emails, and add them to task lists quickly.
The best part? You don’t need to pay a separate fee for Teams, it’s included in your Office 365 subscription.
Collaboration Platforms
Trello
One of the most widely used collaboration platforms is Trello. While the user interface isn’t quite as aesthetically pleasing as other options, the functionality of the service more than makes up for it.
Trello is a visual representation of processes, tasks, and lists needed to complete a project. You can assign different items or communicate within an item to help get clarification or direction on what is needed. This kind of visual board helps everyone know exactly what needs to be done and what has already been accomplished.
Basecamp
Like Trello, Basecamp offers a more visual way to see and accomplish the tasks assigned to you.
Basecamp may be a little more complicated to set up, but it allows you to sync your events and tasks to a calendar like Google or Outlook. You are also able to communicate within the entire project as opposed to limiting communication to a single card or event.
Whatever you decide, or if you decide to use a couple of these options, your email inbox will thank you. These days inboxes get cluttered with so many things, it’s time to move most of the chatting outside of the inbox and into something a little easier.
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