Today more and more companies choose to offer their workers the possibility of taking advantage of remote work. Teleworking has reformulated the way in which team collaboration is established within organizations. Business communication has had to evolve from face-to-face contact between the team to do so through Internet-based collaboration tools.
One of the main fears in companies, when the online communication of their workers was established in such a majority way, was the loss of efficiency in the formal and informal communication of the company. A virtual switchboard solution for companies It is a good alternative to communicate with the client, but what about the members of the organization themselves?
In parallel, technology has been developing tools that allow teams to establish different ways of communicating, reflecting, in some way, what happens when teams collaborate personally. It is not exclusively about being able to talk to the other person, but about being able to see them, being able to do it with more than one person, being able to provide documentation…
On the other hand, for companies it is crucial not only to choose technologies that allow all these forms of communication, but also, necessarily, it is necessary to choose technologies that generate traceability of everything that is done. For all this, the recordings of telephone conversations, videoconferences, conversations carried out between colleagues or in groups or even knowing what time work has started are elementary.
What are the main tools for professional communications?
In order to promote effective collaboration between remote teams, it seems essential that at least the following tools exist in any environment unified communications:
Inbox
On many occasions, in business communication it is easier to send a message or quickly exchange several messages with any colleague than to call them. It is less bulky, it is more precise -for example, if you need to leave a message- and it is less invasive.
In addition to one-on-one communication, the existence of groups where team collaboration can exist also seems essential. Whether by departments (administration, sales, IT) by locations or, for example, by languages, having a joint communication element usually generates a lot of value.
Calls
It is the most basic and, technologically speaking, the classic form of communication for teams that operate remotely.
The great advantage of Internet communication within the same platform is cost savings. Until not many years ago, telephone communication technically needed to be carried out from number to number, which generated costs, especially important for international calls.
Thanks to the Internet, calls between two users using the same platform are free.
Video calls or video conference
There has been a big explosion, especially after the covid. Somehow, it is the channel that best recreates face-to-face contact with the rest of the team.
States
It is just as important to be able to count on various tools for depending on the type of communication, such as the possibility of knowing in advance what state my colleagues are in. In the same way that face-to-face collaboration is easy because you can see if someone is talking on the phone, if they are doing it with another colleague or if they simply seem busy, it is also essential that online communication can reflect these states: busy, available, on a call, on a video call etc
There are some tools that have alerts for status changes, which makes it tremendously efficient because it allows the rest of the colleagues to know with a push notification when the person with whom they want to communicate is available.
Monitoring and data
On the business side, it is essential not only to give tools teleworking for communicating with the team but be able to control an effective form. For this reason, it is essential to have recordings of the calls, of the video calls, records of all the conversations that have taken place by messaging. In the same way, it seems important to be able to measure the time in which the members of the organization connect to control workloads.
In short, these collaboration tools that encourage remote work are here to stay.
