6 Ways Small and Medium Businesses Can Use Messaging Apps
At the end of the day, small businesses need tools that can match the pace they operate
Fast and efficient communication is a necessity for small businesses. With local and remote employees, customers, and partners, you must to be able to stay in sync no matter where you’re working. Yet many communication tools at work today – email, phone calls, voicemail and instant messaging – can be slow, inefficient or cumbersome.
Email can be a time drain and lack timeliness.
Phone calls and voicemail can be obtrusive, especially when working in teams across time zones, and there’s no guarantee the recipient will even get your message.
At the end of the day, small businesses need tools that can match the pace they operate. So it’s no surprise that many small and medium businesses are using consumer messaging apps like WhatsApp, GroupMe, and iMessage to communicate and coordinate. Messaging apps like these have seen astronomical growth over the last few years, and offer a fast and conversational communication channel without a complex technical deployment.
I’m sure a number of you reading this use many of these same apps to stay in touch with friends and family. Yet these consumer apps lack many of the features, security, and administrative controls needed in a business tool: such as using work issued email address instead of personal phone numbers, file sharing, the ability to integrate into existing tools, and more.
Many small businesses are now turning to more secure messaging apps designed for work, like Cotap, to enhance the way their teams communicate and get things done.
Check out 6 ways a work mobile messaging app can help your small business:
1. Accelerate Sales Cycles:
Sharing timely bits of information can go a long way in advancing deals to closure more quickly. And having both your internal team, as well potential customer, on the same page is key. Messaging apps can help accelerate conversations to minutes, not days as often is the case with email. Plus, many business messaging apps integrate with CRM systems, such as Salesforce, making it a breeze to quickly start conversations around any leads, opportunities, or accounts.
2. Manage inventory:
Proactively keeping track of inventory plays a big role to small business operations. Whether it’s coordinating between retail locations, traveling employees, or major events or tradeshows, you need to keep a pulse on inventory to make sure your business runs smoothly. Messaging apps can help streamline inventory communication and coordination with quick groups.
And since many integrate into work file sharing tools like Box, Google Drive, and Dropbox, you can conveniently share files like purchase orders, inventory checklists, and product specs no matter where you are.
3. Share Customer Feedback:
Regardless of your size, the ability to quickly capture and act on customer feedback is key to ensuring you’re providing products and services customers love. Messaging apps provide an easy channel to quickly pass feedback to your team – whether you’re at the customer site, at a tradeshow, or on a conference call. This can enable you to instantly act on any issues, highlight successes stories, and help non-customer facing parts of your business see how their contributions impact customers.
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