A lot of businesses today use internet-based tools. Unlike the old times, when active collaboration was limited within the offices, technology has enabled professionals to coordinate their work from thousands of miles apart.
Nearly 56% of organizations use online collaboration tools and social media to communicate with their workers.
When Covid-19 quarantined professionals at home, the collaboration tools like Video conference software, project management, employee management, etc., became necessary.
Even if your employees are not working remotely, they might need to use some collaboration tool to complete their work projects efficiently. For example, to discuss and check weekly on the team’s progress.
What are the possible reasons for getting collaboration tools?
You might be using several tools for your business and planning to get a few more running in the organization soon. Before using any tool in a group, you should ask whether they need it and what purpose it will serve.
Here is a list of possible reasons for getting a team collaboration tool for your business:
- To better manage remote workers
- To get the work done efficiently through the 24×7 live software platforms
- To provide better and faster customer service
- To document the employees and work data that may be required in the future
- To make faster decisions by getting everyone from top-bottom on a software platform
- To gather quick employee feedback and surveys
- To check progress and manager performance reviews
- To give shout-outs to the high-performers
- To declare necessary company messages and announcements
- To ask senior leaders for direct feedback
Five Ways online collaboration tools can help you get more business
1. More efficient customer service and better retention
Customer is king – it is not only a saying; it’s a fact. SaaS business leaders know how critical customer retention is to become profitable. Great team coordination can help you deliver an enhanced user experience.
Have you observed the time between the customer complaints and complete resolution at your organization? When the team members communicate well and coordinate their responses, the customer issues get addressed and resolved quickly.
A continuous and well-implemented collaboration system also enhances the alignment between different teams at the company. When the marketing, sales, and customer success group communicate well, they can provide a consistent and pleasant onboarding experience for the new user, which increases their retention chances.
Other benefits of having collaboration software for customer retention are recording essential customer feedback, quickly accessible user data insights, addressing urgent issues through remote working, better customer service response time, etc.
2. Empower the team to focus on the business goals
It’s not necessary that your team will perform at its best when they have all the resources. Employees must be engaged in their jobs and effectively coordinate to achieve desired business outcomes.
The first step in any team effort is to define the goals. Each team member cannot contribute well if they don’t have a vision of the desired goals. Many leaders make the mistake of not developing a system that communicates and manages the business goals and objectives.
Maintaining a clear group focus is easy for small teams, but when the group gets larger and more diverse, you must implement some collaboration tools to manage the goals.
They need a multi-functional tool where teams can manage their projects, collaborate in real-time, and manage OKRs (Objectives and key results).
3. Faster product development and better user experience
It is the era where people see strategic collaboration in the SaaS industry. Technology consumers are not just limited to buying anymore. Some consumers go all the way to collaborate with the software development teams and help them design an enhanced product.
Even if you don’t bring in the product users and develop a swift collaboration system at your workplace, you will build and maintain a product with enhanced user experience.
An effective communication system works in real time and helps the development team to work on customer feedback quickly.
You can even bring other team members’ ideas into the process. The sales and customer support groups have helpful insights into the ideal customers, such as their pain points and most lovable product features.
When you work with smooth collaboration software, you can provide more value to the customer in a shorter period.
4. Innovative ideas and solutions help in being more competitive
Even the greatest companies can lose the prosperity track when their ideas become outdated and invalid with time. A company may still make quality products but fail to realize the changing market trends and behavior.
A company’s success and failure are dependent on the team. When the group stops communicating and engaging in strategic planning, the business starts to dip with the slightest misconduct.
When teams focus on the work with innovative planning and execution, they become unstoppable. Digital collaboration software facilitates brainstorming, creative feedback, and suggestions combined with the employee-friendly work culture.
Psychological safety is a big factor in enabling the group to get creative. As a leader, it’s your job to implement free communication and collaboration system in the workplace. When you do this, you differentiate the organization from the competition and get more chances to outgrow them.
5. Saves costs and time
A profitable business should be built on the foundation of cost-efficient practices and not just by working on ambitious revenue goals.
Here are some cost-saving advantages of digital collaboration software:
- Workers can store and access critical data and information instantly on the cloud-based software
- Remote workers can work from home and collaborate digitally
- Frequently used integrations on the software save costs for having multiple tools
- Employees can be more productive when they learn to use the tools
- People can access the collaborative software on their phones and reply sooner
- The strategic collaboration is time-efficient as the customer directly involve with the developers
- Employees save time by directly communicating with the leaders without getting permissions
