Why Your Business Needs Custom Internal Communication
Why Your Business Needs Custom Internal Communication
One of the key drivers behind businesses’ success is communication. It is a given that companies must communicate with their customers to make sales and pique the interest of their target market. However, how they communicate internally also has a significant impact on a company’s success. Here is why your business needs custom internal communication.
Improving productivity in the workplace.
Many leading companies have decided to have custom team communication apps, and it’s given them a competitive advantage. There are many different packaged, online communication tools that function as platforms for team communication. Through direct chat, file sharing, and other project collaboration features, these tools improve productivity in the workplace.
With all the packaged tools available on the market, businesses can easily find solutions for their communication needs. While most messenger applications cover the necessities of quick communication between employees, a challenge that companies face is that these tools may not offer more in-depth features like saved conversation histories or cross-platform usability, to name a few.
The essentials of business communication tools
Starting conversations with colleagues using email and anxiously waiting for a response is a thing of the past. These days, the majority of businesses have effective internal communication channels in place which employees can use to communicate in real-time using text, audio, or video chat.
While conversing in real-time from different corners of the office building (or the world) is still very impressive, just chatting over a messenger isn’t enough. Whether your business runs on-site or virtually, companies of all sizes rely on streamlined communication to keep moving forward.
A remote-work culture, making it more critical than ever to ensure that all employee conversations are consistent, timely, productive, and easy to manage.
With an abundance of information being passed around in the workplace, manually managing and keeping this information updated is virtually impossible. There are countless options for packaged communication tools floating around in the digital realm of software and applications, and finding one to install is as simple as typing it into Google’s search engine. However, choosing the one that best suits your company is where it gets tough.
Widely used digital communication platforms, such as Slack and Asana, are well known for helping companies improve their workflow processes with project management and private or group real-time messaging tools. But are these really the best employee communication solutions out there, and do they fully meet your company’s needs?
The challenges of using packaged communication tools.
Packaged communication tools offer straightforward solutions to a company’s basic messaging and project management needs. Most solutions available are mobile-device friendly and include features for collaboration, such as chat or video. These tools help teams stay updated with tasks and discussions even when on-the-go.
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Often, packaged tools have pricing plans and features.
While many communication solutions have their platforms available for download at no cost, it may be that a free trial only lasts for a fixed period.
Some features that are most useful to employees can become disabled until businesses make the inevitable upgrade to a paid plan. As with every existing tiered subscription pricing model, the concept remains the same: the more you pay, the more features you get to use, and the better off your employees will be
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Here’s the thing with paid software solutions.
When looking at paid plans for software solutions, the lower-priced options may offer full collaboration tools, push notifications, and security. What businesses would fundamentally be missing out on with this seemingly inexpensive subscription are integrations with other applications and personalization.
When you’re trying to set up a real-time messaging, simple file-sharing environment for your employees, these things may not seem as important at first. As you go along, the ability to integrate your communication tool with other software or platforms will help you save time and streamline your workflow.
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Packaged communication tools usually have the necessary integrations.
Namely with cloud-based file storage and synchronization, customer data, analytics, or project management software. However, the integrations they offer may not go as far as some of the products your team already uses. Not having the required options leaves teams with two decisions:
- Sign up for new software that can easily be integrated with the tool.
- Upgrade your subscription and speak to customer support about manually adding your existing software to their integrations.
Both options can be time-consuming as you would have to either ditch your existing software and migrate all your data to a new platform or have to wait for your feature request to be completed.
Integrations and personalization only scratch the surface.
What about making sure that your company’s communication is secure and protected? When subscribing to readily available communication app solutions, your company has zero control over the safekeeping of information or data being passed between team members, as this is hosted on the app’s server.
Not only do companies miss out on exclusive, encrypted security, but the lack of flexibility means that you wouldn’t be able to add new features or customize the look of your app when needed.
The key takeaway.
The key takeaway from this is that the available “off-the-rack” communication tools for businesses may provide swift solutions for the time being. Still, they can be extremely costly, and submitting tickets and fixing bugs are very likely to be an inconvenience rather than a comfort.
These software solutions are also businesses looking to grow and stay afloat, and that means they’ll have a growing number of other customers using their tools. That being said, when you have an issue that needs solving, working on fixing individual cases from their side may dig into the time that your own business relies on to get things moving.
Why custom employee communication solutions are better.
A fully customized communication app gives businesses more than your average messaging service that promotes user-friendly, secure, real-time collaboration among employees. When companies choose custom solutions, they are tailor-made to their specific needs and do not just provide a round-up of what businesses generally need.
Apart from having maximum clarity in your voice, video, and group chats, a personalized messaging application can boost employee morale, as well as keep all conversations organized.
By having effective internal communication channels in place, teams can share rich or multimedia content to conveniently express ideas, discuss how best to prioritize their tasks, and throw in some humor to build rapport and celebrate milestones together. It’s like improving efficiency and togetherness, but better.
Businesses can work smarter and improve the way they engage with their teams – all while keeping the important stuff centralized.
Another winning point is that custom communication solutions have over the off-the-rack basics is that businesses that choose this option get to own their source code.
This implies that the company dictates which type of features their communication app will have, and all internal collaboration and conversations are safely encrypted on their servers.
Take Scopic for example.
As a communication-centric company, Scopic saw that there was a need and opportunity in building a customized messaging app to fully meet the company’s communication needs. With that vision in mind, we combined the best features from leading communication tools and built our very own internal chat application called Kreo.
Kreo was built from the ground up. Fast-forward to today, and not only is the company in full control of the features the chat platform offers, but we also have control over the source code. When a company has control over the source code, it helps ensure the security of all internal communications.
Thinking long-term, building our own internal communication tool also helps us save costs by not having to pay for additional features or integrations we may not use that readily available solutions offer.
Working with a software company to build a personalized communication application for your business is also more cost-effective in the long run. You won’t have to worry about renewing monthly or annual subscriptions, and there won’t be a need to pay for extra features. You can also say goodbye to those pesky email newsletters urging you to upgrade your plan.
What to look for in a custom communication tool.
You are more likely to have an idea of what you are specifically looking for when you choose a custom solution that is a building block. Using a building block means that all the core functions of a communication tool are built-in before you start adding more specific features.
- Minimalistic, scalable architecture that can handle virtually unlimited traffic
- The ability to filter through and search for messages
- The ability to store cached data
- Audio, video and group real-time messages between users and user-servers
- Push-notification service
- Brand or business personalization features
- Ownership of source code and exclusive security
- White-labeling
The essentials of business communication tools and how packaged options offer efficient project management and team collaboration are essential. Custom-made solutions are tailor-made to fit business needs across different industries.
A personalized chat and collaboration experience can make all the difference when it comes to improving the way teams work together. These chats are scalable, and customizable giving businesses the security and flexibility they need to add more features and integrations as they grow.
Every company is unique, and when it comes to choosing a communication solution. When you use an internal chat and project management option that is fully customizable — it will meet the needs of your team and your business.
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