We’re a talkative bunch at staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud. Chances are if you work in a team, you like to chat with other members, too.
But we’ve found that chat platforms aren’t always the best fit for work-related conversations. The thing is, we find them pretty distracting.
Say what?
While we know remote work and chat platforms often go hand in hand, they can act as a blocker to deep work and streamlined team-wide collaboration.
In this article, we’ll be showing you how to build a more seamless team communication system, so you always get your best work done.
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Why should you avoid chat platforms in the office?
Between juggling multiple deadlines, managing clients, and collaborating with team members, the constant pinging of chat notifications is the last thing you need.
Messages get lost
Have you ever tried to track down that one message with the password you need now? We all know that frustrating feeling of desperation.
You’re sure that Sarah from operations sent the password out last Tuesday.
Or was it last Thursday?
Whether you remember the exact timing of the message or not, we can all agree it’s annoying and time-consuming, going through multiple days worth of messages to find the one bit of information you need.
Chat makes it too easy to lose vital details in a wave of noise and office gossip.
It’s hard to track who said what
It’s easy to remember the vague details of a conversation you had the other day, but when it comes to specific information, it’s not always simple to remember who said what.
Picture this: you ask for everyone’s best editorial titles for your upcoming content calendar. Suddenly, you’ve got 10 different team members frantically pinging ideas into the chat thread.
While it’s top marks for creativity and team effort, a few hours later you’re left trying to piece together all the different ideas and figure out who said what.
Chat platforms make it hard to track different ideas and make team members accountable.
Constant message streams are distracting
When your team relies on multiple chat platforms, email, and project management software, it can become difficult to concentrate on one item at a time.
Between all these different collaboration and communication platforms, your team probably receives hundreds of daily notifications.
Maybe they hop between different browser windows and devices, trying to respond to each message instantly. Or perhaps they’ve put blockers on different platforms so they can do a few hours of deep, uninterrupted work.
Either way, chat platforms are another distraction that may take team members away from more pressing tasks.
What are the alternatives to using chat in the office?
Your team may swear by their chosen office chat platform.
Hold up though!
Better alternatives are available for seamless team communication and collaboration.
Face-to-face communication
We all like a good catch-up with our team members from time to time. But when it comes to strictly discussing work-related matters, face-to-face meetings aren’t always the best chat alternative.
Perhaps you’ve walked into a meeting or launched a video call thinking it’d be just 15 minutes long. Soon, the minutes roll along, and suddenly a full hour has gone by. You wonder where the time has gone, and your afternoon seems so much shorter than it did before.
Along with being time-consuming, meeting face-to-face or via Zoom has many of the same downsides as chat. It can be hard to track ideas and hold team members accountable for different tasks.
It can be harder to decline face-to-face meetings, too, making it difficult for team members who don’t need to be involved to say no.
Lots of meetings can make the day feel disjointed for team members and act as a distraction. We all know how it feels to look at an overflowing to-do list only to spend the day jumping from meeting to meeting.
Emails, whether you love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re impossible to ignore.
You might be a productivity saint and be able to send 20 emails in a row, or you might dread having to write just one of them.
We’ve all experienced that crushing feeling of an overflowing inbox that just refuses to reach zero.
In fact, 16% of office workers say that they constantly fail to keep on top of their emails, and the average worker has 651 unread emails in their inbox.
It’s no wonder that office workers can feel overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of daily emails popping up. For that reason, we don’t recommend emails as the top chat alternative.
Emails can eat up large chunks of the workday and take team members away from more valuable tasks.
Use a Work OS
Instead of relying on chat platforms for in-office team communication, we recommend using a complete Work OS.
Powerful cloud-based software platforms can help you effectively manage your projects and communication all in one place.
But, how can a Work OS work as a chat alternative?
A Work OS will help you keep all work and project communication in one place, so you never lose that password, brilliant idea, or meeting time again. Tag team members, open chat windows, or even embed video recordings. It’ll all be there alongside the rest of your project.Say goodbye to that annoying background noise of constant pinging notifications and focus on the communication that truly matters.
Your communication streams will effortlessly flow into action items, making project management more enjoyable.
staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud Work OS: 7 reasons why it’s a great chat alternative
If you’re wondering how a Work OS could be the right chat alternative for you, we’ve got the answers.
1. Visualize all project-related communication in one place
Forget about hopping from chat platform to video meeting to email thread. Instead, create threads directly on your staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud board that are directly related to each task, project, and workflow.
Post details like passwords, requested changes, and ideas alongside your projects.
You’ll find that having all project-related communication in one place saves time and boosts your team’s productivity levels. You’ll no longer need to chase team members for key details.
2. View intuitive and color-coordinated boards
Team communication and collaboration are more enjoyable when you work from beautifully visual and user-friendly boards.
When all you need to do is quickly glance at the status of each task, which team member is tagged to take charge, and each deadline, both your and your team’s lives become infinitely easier.
Say goodbye to long and tedious team training sessions. Our project management, CRM, and other work boards are so intuitive, your team will naturally find their way around the platform.
Take this event planning board on staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud, for instance. Event planning is often associated with complex logistics and operations. Successful events often require seamless collaboration and coordination.
To take it one step further, team members could comment on each component and tag one another for an even higher level of collaboration.
3. Integrate office chat applications
By now, you might be dead certain that you’re ready to escape the office chat platforms and ditch them for good.
But your team members might think otherwise.
If they really want to keep hold of their chat streams, you can have the best of both worlds and seamlessly integrate them with staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud.
Whether your team likes a messaging app like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Gmail, it’s easy to integrate chatting into staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud and make conversation threads actionable items.
Take a look at our full list of 40+ integrations here.
4. Embed video conferences
Zoom might be all the rage right now for video conferencing, but that doesn’t always make it the best tool for capturing and implementing project-related ideas.
We’ve all had those video chat calls full of ideas and creativity, only for the team to hang up and without anyone having any clear direction on who is doing what and when.
While a video call-free work world would certainly have its advantages, it’s still nice to check in with your teammates face-to-face and catch up on everything related to the project.
Instead of having fluffy Zoom meetings that don’t necessarily lead anywhere, give them an agenda and make them actionable. A great way to do this is to directly embed your Zoom calls into your project management board.
When you integrate Zoom for video calls, you keep everything in context and easily collect all the relevant information you need from your meetings right into your staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud board.
5. Automate emails
As we mentioned, endless emails can be a drain on anyone’s overall productivity. Nobody likes to be buried in a sea of emails that don’t require instant responses or personalized attention.
While some of us would like to say goodbye to emails for good, that’s unlikely to happen in the work world anytime soon.
But there’s no need to give into playing a tiresome game of email table tennis, either.
Instead, meet your new productivity secret weapon — automations.
Let’s face it, not all emails require a personalized message. Some might be product orders, confirmations, or appointment reminders. These kinds of emails are the best candidates for automation.
When you automate some of your email responses, your entire team saves valuable time that they can spend on other, more valuable tasks.
As a bonus, you’ll also eliminate human error and ensure that everything remains accurate and in line with your business communication style.
6. Protect your conversations and projects with enterprise-grade security
Cybersecurity wizards, scientific geniuses, and coding pros all use staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud to centralize their work. Effective and safe communication often means limiting who has access to what.
Whether you work with teams of hundreds of individuals or collaborate with vendors and other third parties, you likely need to make sure the right data is shared with the right people.
Easy-to-adjust, customizable permissions make it easy to decide who has access to what. Once shared, rest assured that your data is safe with staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud.
We work with only the strictest security measures and hold multiple global standard certifications.
7. Access resources whenever your team needs additional guidance
While we can toot our own horn all day long about how user-friendly and intuitive staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud is, sometimes you may want a few extra tips so you can be sure you’re making the most out of your Work OS.
We’ve got dozens of resources prepped for helping your team get their best work done.
For helpful hints and tips, try our:
For those times when you can’t find the answer to your question, our customer support team is on hand to guide you. The best part is, they’ll answer your question quicker than you can have a pizza delivered.
As a bonus, staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud also comes as an iPhone and android app.
staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud: chat alternative in action
Our business development template is a great illustration of why staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud’s Work OS is great for live chat functions.
In larger companies, business development is often a separate department, but the team often pulls on insights from other divisions like the marketing, product, and sales teams.
Additionally, business development teams often have multiple projects and leads open at any time.
To track and keep the whole department in the loop, a business development tracker template will work wonders.
Instead of back-and-forth messages about who has contacted who or at what stage of the deal each company is in, this board will tell everyone involved what’s going on.
Rather than use a chat app like Slack or a similar alternative, you can keep all business development conversations within the board and never worry again about someone missing the beat.
Tag other team members and automate notifications for when the status, price, or deliverable changes.
Chat alternatives save you time
If you find most communication channels and chat alternatives to be a drain on your business’s productivity, you’re not alone.
Instead of trying to maintain work-related conversations on endless chat channels, we recommend trying out a Work OS to keep communication on track and in the context of your projects.
Check out our 200+ templates and see how you could successfully use staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud as a live chat alternative.
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