Identify communication problems when your team are dispersed

Businesses of all sizes face communication issues from time to time. The challenge facing
small and medium companies are often greater as they just don’t have the resources
necessary to completely tackle the problem. Not having the right resources in place has only
aggravated the risk from potential communication problems.

These issues can range from customers being unable to easily reach the correct member of
staff they need, through to your employees having difficulty communicating with their fellow
colleagues. Here’s our advice on identifying common communication issues for small and
medium size businesses – and how to get over those issues.

Slow decision making slowing down everything

Whether it’s staff waiting for replies from managers, teams searching for suitable meeting
times or employees waiting for information from various departments, businesses often
underestimate the time employees waste simply waiting for replies or information from
someone else. You should try and minimise such downtime like this as much as possible.
One way to overcome this is to implement a good conference calling system. Virtual
meetings and conference calls will help teams working from home or widely distributed
meet and collaborate on projects, leading to quicker decision making and improving overall
workflow.

Missing calls

Missed calls are the bane of many small and medium size businesses. Each one represents a
potential missed opportunity such as lost sales, loss of customer trust or a vital piece of
information for a project being missed. If it keeps happening, customers will lose faith in
your firm and go elsewhere. Do your staff regularly miss calls because they’re away from
their desk?

Call groups is one way around the issue. Sometimes customers are not looking for a specific
member of staff to solve their issue. Anyone in the team – whether sales, service or admin –
can help them. So allow any free staff member to answer the call instead of routing it to a
specific extension.

The multi-device ring feature is yet another effective solution. It allows staff to add multiple
devices to ring – in a chain or in parallel – when a call comes in. The person can answer on
the closest device, instead of running back to their desk.

Lack of contact with remote employees

Working from home is the norm for millions of us at the moment, but it can add
communication problems. You don’t want employees working remotely to feel forgotten or
be left out of important projects, so how can you ensure that doesn’t happen?​

Video chats and virtual meetings can ensure everyone stays in touch and you won’t miss the
visual cues you might get during an in-person meeting. Regular emails and phone calls to
check in can also help.

Equations has a number of communications solutions including VoIP and hosted
phone systems that can help you and your team stay in touch during the pandemic
and be flexible enough to meet your ever-changing needs. If you’d like to learn more,
give us a call on 01237 420010.

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