Be it a small or large business, conference calls, and emails may not be effective for team communication. The current workforce requires a single platform where all the team members can communicate with each other and together manage their projects in real-time using multiple devices.
Numerous team chat apps are available. Here are some features you must look for while choosing a team app for your business.
Native apps for all devices
The emergence of smartphones and mobile applications has increased the demand for mobile messaging applications. Modern chat apps for businesses date back to Hipchat and Slack, which are known to be the founding fathers of the current chat apps. However, they were not the only ones and they could not satisfy all the demands of the users.
Remote teams play a crucial part in today’s workforce, where employees work from different places at different time zones. Workers who travel do their work through their mobile devices. To minimize the gap between remote workers, most companies use video conferencing. However, it can be difficult to schedule a convenient time for workers working in different time zones. Team messaging is convenient, easy, and instant.
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Team chat apps help to organize online discussions into direct messages and group streams. You may have any number of streams as per your requirement. Mostly, there will be an organization channel wide enough to deliver corporate communications along with project-related or departmental groups. Sometimes there will be a stream for fun also where workers share jokes, interesting articles, family milestones, etc, to improve employee engagement.
The most efficient messaging apps come with applications that can work on all devices. They must be compatible with both iPhone and Android operating systems along with desktop applications for Mac computers and PC.
More than messaging
Various software programs are available focusing on different streams and chat rooms. Even though chat conversation is important in businesses, it alone cannot carry out business communications effectively. A good chat application must help the company to increase its engagement and productivity with extra features. Find a software solution that provides storage space to share files between team members and allows them to easily collaborate on various projects through any device.
If the app can help employees to share files outside their emails, they can easily organize data without searching in cluttered emails. By choosing the best software, you can streamline your business processes helping team members to share documents, files, videos, images, etc instantly.
Task management
Some chat apps provide task management capabilities too along with messaging and file-sharing options. Choose applications that allow employees to manage their to-do lists and to track their progress in the group and individual targets and goals. Tracking these targets and goals in a public platform increases the liability towards the goals and minimizes the need for holding many meetings. Thus, all the employees will be available in a single space without the need to meet each other and can track the progress of their projects effectively.