A Communication Game Changer — Why Are You Hesitating To Try IM?

September 26, 2018 Instant Messaging

If you’re new to instant messaging, you may not be aware of its advantages. Or you may be hesitant to fully commit to an unfamiliar way of communication. By now, though, it’s worth seeing what it can do for your communication — especially in the workplace.

Below we’ll help you find right alternative, refute possible pushback, and ease any lingering doubts you may have about instant messaging.

Do Your Homework

These days the market is saturated with options, each offering myriad features and tools. And with everyone seemingly preferring a different app, finding the right solution can be a headache. So what do you do? Well, with a bit of homework, you’ll find that there’s an option to suit your needs, and that it could transform how you communicate. To start, you’ll need to establish your primary need for an instant messenger — personal or enterprise use.

Consumer chat apps like Viber, WhatsApp, and Messenger are primarily for personal use, offering free text and group chat, voice and video calls, and some extras like gifs and stickers. Importantly, for added security, many consumer-grade chat apps now offer end-to-end encryption, too.

If you’re looking to address your business-related communications, you’ll want to avoid the consumer chat apps and go the route of an enterprise instant messenger. Most business instant messengers offer the features of consumer chat apps, but with a host of collaboration tools and upgraded security, as well.

If you’ve settled on a business instant messenger, you’ll not only need to pinpoint your communication issues, but prioritize the features you’ll most utilize, the level of security you’ll need, and how much you’re willing to pay. Unfortunately, not all instant messengers are created equally. Some offer more integration capabilities, but on costly packages with complicated interfaces and varying degrees of security. With careful consideration of these factors, you can better choose the right alternative, effectively streamline your communication, and boost your efficiency and productivity.

Negate the Pushback

Your team communication and collaboration are unique to your business and work environment. Adding new or different technology into the equation could always be a topic of contention. Members of your team or even you yourself may be unsure of the benefits of instant messaging and, therefore, reluctant to try it. In that case, how do you validate its use?
Aside from trying it out, here are a few examples to help.

Imagine you’ve got multiple teams spread across a large office space, separate office buildings, or even different time zones. Group chats can be tailored to these specific team needs — departmental, geographical, and so on — offering individualized real-time chat spaces. By enhancing your team connectivity, an instant messaging platform ensures a more productive work environment.

Or let’s say members of your team are out of the office. You, however, need to confirm or recall information from a prior chat. Chat history archives allow you to avert idle situations where potentially crucial details of a chat are inaccessible. With direct messaging, inquiries and issues are addressed more quickly while with file transfer, data is shared more efficiently. Other features like broadcast messaging and screen sharing make your team collaboration more multi-faceted and comprehensive.

The simplicity of instant messaging and its associated features can even create a more inclusive and accommodating workplace, affording new advantages to those with disabilities. According to the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union (ITU), 10% of the world’s working population deal with hearing, vision, or other physical or cognitive impairments. Technological developments now afford this segment of the population the ability to more fully participate in work-related and social activities.

The hearing impaired are often visual communicators and, though email and instant messaging would seem logical, prefer the visible benefits of video chat alternatives. One such solution, Glide, has become a huge hit by allowing users to leave video messages, as opposed to prearranging a time for a video chat.

Text messaging, on the other hand, levels the playing field for people with speech impediments — allowing them to also communicate in real-time, but without the stigma or judgment that may arise as a result of more traditional means of communication.

If you’re still having trouble countering pushback to instant messaging, be willing to compromise. Recognize that, like everything else, instant messaging too has limitations. If you’re not in need of an immediate response, or your text chats are starting to read like a novel, then email’s probably the way to go. And while features like voice and video chat are useful options, they can’t, and shouldn’t, replicate the human interaction that’s fundamental to your mental health and well-being.

Put Your Fears to Bed

You may already have a favorite personal chat app which you use to keep in touch with family and friends, share pictures, videos, gifs, and files, as well. But with their use in the workplace, you’d be right to wonder about time-wasting and inefficiency. And with news of security breaches and data hacks regularly dominating the newsfeed, you’d be right to wonder about security, too.

Luckily, there’s a solution which puts both of these fears to bed. Brosix Instant Messenger is a real-time business communication alternative which provides the administrative tools to keep your team focused and the security features to keep your data protected.

Brosix offers your enterprise a private team network, allowing you to authorize access on an individual basis. With its range of administrative controls, you can customize the platform as you see fit — tailoring chat spaces to specific users or groups, delegating the features to which each user has access, even monitoring users through a comprehensive chat history archive.

What’s more, Brosix has long been a step ahead in the measures it employs to keep your data safe. For starters, communications are always peer to peer, meaning you’ll bypass the risk of storing data on third-party servers. All data is then compressed and encrypted end-to-end using the AES 256-bit encryption algorithm. You even have the ability to integrate your anti-virus software into the platform for added peace of mind.

And the best part — you get an all-in-one package featuring a host of tools to streamline your team communication and collaboration.

To Sum Up

Many personal chat apps are free to download, while most business instant messengers offer free trial versions. Test driving some platforms should help ease any doubts you have, as well as alleviate any pushback. By taking a little time to consider your needs, you can find the solution to advance your real-time communication needs and workplace efficiency and productivity.

Originally published at www.brosix.com on September 26, 2018.