Reinventing work chat: a better alternative for businesses

If your team still uses a traditional work chat to collaborate, you’re missing out. Upgrading to a more comprehensive business-messaging platform can streamline your team’s processes, and improve engagement and efficiency. In other words, the right tool can make work more pleasant and productive.

Your messaging software should support all types of business communications, from simple, text-based messages to real-time video calls. The right platform will offer a robust set of knowledge-sharing features and integrate with your team’s most-used tools to elevate your remote collaboration game. Here’s what you should know about the new world of team chat solutions.

What is business messaging?

Business-messaging software takes remote team collaboration to the next level, addressing the limitations of typical chat programs while expanding connections and boosting productivity.

Comprehensive business messaging provides a new alternative to the work chat you’re used to. Unlike traditional chat programs, a dedicated business-communication medium like Slack supports both real-time and asynchronous conversations among team members.

Companies of all sizes, from startups and small businesses to multinational corporations, can benefit from business messaging.

Ultimately, moving your work-chat capabilities to a business-messaging platform makes it easier for everyone on your team to understand and contribute to conversations.

Work chat vs. business messaging: Why make the switch?

Business messaging offers several benefits over traditional work chat:

Supports flexibility

Business messaging supports remote and hybrid teams by adapting to the ways they truly work. It allows for both real-time and asynchronous communication, enabling team members on different schedules and in different time zones to stay on the same page.

Improves collaboration

Business-messaging software gathers your company’s employees, customers and partners on one platform. Slack Connect, for example, lets you chat with people outside of your organization using your company’s existing Slack workspace.

With standardized access to conversations, project notes and other collaboration tools, you’ll know your teammates and stakeholders are working from a single source of truth. Plus, search capabilities and automatic archiving keep communications organized and easier to find.

Slack makes collaboration even simpler with Slack huddles, which support on-the-spot voice and video calls, complete with screen-sharing capabilities.

Simplifies knowledge sharing

With group texts and other basic work chat services, only those specifically added to a chat can view its conversations, which limits knowledge sharing. Business messaging lets you add and remove channel members as needed to ensure that all stakeholders are in the loop and have access to the information they need.

A business-messaging platform should also support document sharing and app integrations to make your remote team more productive. For example, Slack facilitates effective async communications with clips, which let users send and watch voice and video notes on their own time. And Slack canvas provides a centralized space for users to share notes, files, to-do lists, images and other essential information.

Slack even allows users to forward messages to other channels and direct messages (DMs) to make knowledge sharing easy.

Makes the most of your tech stack

A top business-messaging application takes advantage of the tech stack your company already uses. If you know what works for your organization, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Your business-messaging solution should fit right in.

Slack works with your company’s existing toolkit by allowing users to add their favorite apps.

What to look for in a business-messaging app

If your company is ready to graduate from its basic work chat app, consider the following factors as you compare and contrast business messaging providers.

Does the platform integrate with your most-used apps?

To make your team more efficient and productive, business-messaging software should be compatible with the apps your company already uses. Slack’s intelligent productivity platform integrates with a robust collection of apps, including:

• Asana
• DocuSign
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Google Drive
• Jira Cloud
• Outlook
• Zoom

Integrations empower you to take a customized, straightforward approach to all your business communications.

Does it make you more productive?

In Slack, you can integrate business messaging with remote team management through Workflow Builder. Automate your hybrid or remote team’s routine processes, such as sending onboarding materials to new hires, directly in Slack. Automated workflows free up your team members for more value-added tasks.

Can it support spontaneous calls?

Async communication is key for efficient remote work, but real-time conversations will always be necessary. Your business-messaging software should support synchronous calls for those moments when you must talk.

In Slack, you can use huddles for on-the-spot, informal discussions directly in any channel or DM. Catch up via audio or video, and you can even share your screen.

Does it encourage knowledge sharing?

Slack makes knowledge sharing a breeze. Use a Slack canvas to store and share ideas, action items, insights and useful information in a flexible, shared space. Every Slack channel and DM comes with a built-in canvas, or you can create a standalone canvas to use for a specific thread, topic or project.

With Slack, you can take knowledge sharing a step further by sharing voice and video notes, exchanging files, searching for previous conversations and managing workflows, right in the Slack platform.

Improve productivity with Slack

When you’re ready to level up from your old work chat service, Slack is here with a dynamic business-messaging solution. You’ll have access to a suite of user-friendly features, such as:

• Automated workflows with Workflow Builder
• Document sharing to easily swap files within Slack
• Organizational tools to keep your conversations and projects in order
• Permissions by role to allow different levels of access based on each user’s type of role in Slack
• Security and peace of mind with Slack’s enterprise-grade data protection
• Slack threads to keep conversations organized and easy to follow, even when employees are reading and responding from different time zones
• The ability to archive unused channels

So much more than a one-dimensional business chat app, Slack seamlessly integrates your team’s communications, tools and workflows into a collective, collaborative space that gives everyone a seat at the table. Contact our sales department to learn more about transitioning to an intelligent productivity platform.