Employees and customers are integral to the success of any business and keeping them happy are important. For your employees, if they’re happy and content with their role, it can help improve productivity and reduce staff turnover rates. For customers, feeling valued and satisfied with the services they receive will keep them coming back for more.
So whether you’re trying to improve communication between your employees or your customers, the right toolkit is handy to have in place. As a business grows, managing communications can become more challenging, so it’s a good idea to implement effective communication for both employees and customers from the beginning.
What tools are best for employee communication? Which platforms are excellent for managing customer queries or complaints? In this guide, we’ll share some of the best tools for improving the relationships between both your employees and the customers you serve. After all, internal and external communications are just as important as the other.
Improving your employee’s experience is essential
Feeling appreciated is something that many employees like to feel. Hubspot found that 69% of employees would work harder if they felt appreciated within the workplace.
When an employee feels undervalued and that communication between the employee and employer isn’t there, it’s only a matter of time before they move on to greener pastures.
Tools for improving employee communication
There are a number of ways that you can better your internal communications, especially as we’re moving into a hybrid working situation of remote/office workspaces. Here are five of the best tools for improving employee communications.
1. Use AI for small business tasks
Artificial intelligence is becoming a significantly popular form of technology to use within business. AI for small business tasks can be very helpful for employees who need to be able to manage their time more efficiently.
Image: Levity
AI tools can be a great way to connect employees on shared projects that may require streamlining in part to maintain a healthier workload in general. Employees can use these tools to ensure everyone is on the same page and singing from the same hymn sheet.
2. Incorporate Trello for collaboration and project management
Collaboration and project management platforms are game-changers when it comes to improving communications within your organization. Incorporate a tool like Trello as it’s highly effective for employees to come together in a shared space, wherever they may be.
Image: Trello
It’s a great one for teams working together from different departments as well as any external resources you may be utilizing too.
3. Get employee feedback with SoGoEX
Not enough businesses focus on workplace satisfaction, especially when it comes to the needs of their employees. According to Office Vibe, 43% of highly engaged employees will receive feedback at least once a week.
Feedback helps employees improve their quality of work and can provide solutions to problems they may be having in the workplace. It can also be helpful for the business to know what’s working and what isn’t. A lot of issues within the company can go undetected by those who managerial positions and that ultimately leads to unhappiness in the workplace.
SoGoEx is just an example of one tool that you can use for gathering employee feedback and using the information you have to make meaningful changes for your employees.
4. Video conferencing with tools like Zoom for remote meetings
Zoom is a great example when it comes to video conferencing tools. It’s been highly engaged with ever since the pandemic began. Despite things returning to a relative kind of normal, the video conferencing platform is still thriving.
In fact, the Zoom mobile app alone was downloaded almost 23 million times in September 2021 across the App Store and Google Play combined. There’s really no sign of it slowing down any time soon.
Video conferencing tools like Zoom offer communication despite the location of your employees. It’s great for remote workers but for those who may be out of the office when a meeting is due to take place.
5. Slack for instant-messaging communication
Sometimes email isn’t quick enough and phone calls can be disruptive in certain situations. For easy communication, an instant-messaging service can be useful for employees to get answers to their questions quickly. Whether it’s getting quick approval for a client to responding to a reactive situation, Slack is a great tool for all of that and more.
With a platform like Slack, your employees can interact with one another in real-time, and communication can remain in place, regardless of the situation. So long as the employees all have access to a WIFI connection, communication can be made.
Tools for Improving Customer Communication
Customer communication helps maintain sales and general interest within the brand and what you’re selling or promoting. With the right tools, your business can go from strength to strength, with customers that are with you for the long run.
1. Make it easy for customers to get in touch with 123 Form Builder web form builder
Understanding what your employees want from your business is essential because it can help you tailor your delivery of products or services, to their needs. A good way to help build that relationship with your customers is through interactive experiences whether it’s direct messaging to email marketing.
A 123 Form builder, web form builder is a great way of creating a question and answer form that customers can fill in. Whether you’re trying to learn more about your demographic or you’re looking for feedback on certain products/services that you want to sell in the future, feedback forms are a useful way of gathering data.
2. Implement an effective CRM software.
Many businesses take advantage of customer relationship management software when it comes to their customers. As a business grows, so too does its customer base. It can be hard to prioritize customer requests and queries coming in left and right. That’s why a CRM can be effective in handling all your queries and prioritizing them where required.
There are lots of them out there, each providing the features you need to provide your customers with a unique and seamless experience. A few popular options to consider are SalesForce, Hubspot, and Zendesk Sell.
3. Use Sprout Social for managing multiple content channels.
Social media is a powerhouse of opportunity and with so many channels now, it can be difficult to know which ones are effective for the business. Maintaining a presence over all of the necessary platforms can be challenging, even for big businesses with a sizeable social media department.
Image: Sprout Special
Sprout Social is a tool that can help manage multiple content channels easily. From scheduling the content to responding to all of the direct messages or comments and mentions you get on a daily basis. The small interactions you have with your customers on a daily basis can make a big difference in how engaged they stay with your brand.
4. Introduce a knowledge base to your site.
A knowledge base site is a good way of sharing the information retained by the business to anyone that might find it useful. It’s good for both employees and customers to use when they’re struggling to find the answers to their questions.
Knowledge bases collate and curate information, which is exactly what some customers may need when considering your business. It can be the difference between a lead passing by and the lead converting into a paying customer.
Atlassian is a great software provider for knowledge base creation and is worth using if you don’t have one in place already.
5. Make use of live chat services and AI.
Live chat services and AI robots are a great way to keep communications going around the clock. Some businesses may be capable of offering live chat services 24/7 but for those who can’t, AI robots are effective too.
With live chat services, customers can get immediate answers to their questions without having to phone up a random number or wait 24-48 hours for an email response. For out-of-office hour queries, AI robots can take over and help answer some basic or sometimes complex questions.
This pairs up quite nicely with the previous point about knowledge bases. Any existing knowledge base you have in place can be used by these robot services, which can integrate and pull resources from it to help answer customer queries.
Utilize the tools available for internal and external communications
Focusing on both internal and external communications is necessary to do this year. Boosting your comms internally is going to maintain productivity levels whilst keeping everyone in the loop, regardless of how big or small the organization may be.
For customers, being heard is critical to helping maintain their interest in the business. With so much competition out there, staying relevant is a lot more difficult. Engage with your customers and ensure they feel valued by your business.
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