At the beginning of 2020, an estimated 62 percent of full-time employees in the United States worked remotely at least to some degree, according to Owl Labs’ State of Remote Work survey. That number steeply increased in the wake of COVID-19. This escalation in working offsite requires the use of virtual communication tools to keep teams on the same page, despite shifts in workflow and location.
In this landscape of social distancing and remote working, staying in touch with coworkers and clients is more important than ever before. Real-time communications platforms have cemented the importance of virtual technology across most industries and workspaces. And under this new normal, voice communication has surged back after years on the decline.
Flexible work is no longer just a trend. And remote working — mostly from home during this pandemic — comes with a unique set of challenges. While none outweigh the overall benefits of distributed teams, leaders do need to shift their management and processes to get the best results from a remote workforce.
Gone are the days when companies had everybody working physically side-by-side and remote teams were scarce. The future of work is upon us, by choice or by context. And now more than ever, it has become vital for any business to streamline its communication flow and enable access to the company’s life to all their employees, regardless of where these are located.
Cloud-based Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) platforms have become increasingly more popular for businesses of all sizes. Enterprise spending on UCC tools grew to a $45 billion industry this past year, according to Synergy Research Group, with an average annual growth of 16 percent year-over-year.
One of the most basic necessities of any workplace is proper communication. In today’s world that runs on a hectic schedule, where every productive minute counts, the ability to instantly communicate has been a boon for the global work scenario. However, even in our fast-paced lives, writing etiquette can sometimes make all the difference between successful and unsuccessful communication. Let’s find out how chat and email etiquette can enhance our written communication and get us where we want.
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It starts with an innocent tap on the shoulder — a colleague asks a brief question about an upcoming deadline. No big deal, right? Two conversations and four emails later, you’ve officially wasted almost an hour.
I’m not here to tell you the story of how companies big and small fail to acknowledge the importance of using proper collaboration tools. The cat is out of the bag and has been for years. The market simply isn’t mature enough to take the plunge. What I want to share with you today is the typical scenario where office hours become pure chaos due to simple distractions like the one mentioned above. I’m 100% sure these will strike a chord with fellow office workers far and wide.
Photo by David Pisnoy on Unsplash
For more than 10 years we have been working with communication service providers around the world and one of the biggest challenges they’ve always reported has been customer churn. Even the best service in the world can’t prevent customers from fleeing if what you’re offering isn’t what they need.
Two weeks ago we announced the 4PSA Partner Meetup that will take place in Madrid, Spain at the beginning of summer on June 1-2, 2015. We want to see you there, face to face, and chat the good old-fashioned way 🙂 You will also be able to meet with fellow service providers, exchange ideas, share experience, and have some drinks.
Besides the fun part, there are lots of reasons to join us there. In April we released VoipNow 3.5, in the following days we’ll be launching VoipNow Mobile 2.0 and VoipNow 3.6, and Hubgets is round the corner. With every new version, we are extending the feature set, creating new opportunities for service providers. We want to make sure that you know how to make money out of all the new stuff.
A fast-growing business may be synonymous with success, but not necessarily with smooth sailing too. A business doesn’t just manage itself, and even when there’s high demand for your product, you can fall short in aspects that actually sell it. Like your phone system.
Ask yourself this: if you had to add an extra phone line right now, how much time and effort would it take? How about handling your calls when you step out for coffee, or tracking KPIs? If your organization depends on picking up the phone in a timely fashion, you might want to look into a cloud-based phone system.