5 Best Practices for Small Business Interoffice Messaging


There are several considerations and best practices for small business interoffice messaging. These platforms allow teams to communicate and collaborate instantaneously, enabling significant productivity increases. In fact, surveys have shown that 21% of employees who use interoffice messaging tools experienced a moderate to significant increase in productivity. As an operational manager, implement interoffice messaging tools as well as a few best practices to foster camaraderie between team members, answer questions quickly, and increase efficiency. Read on to discover five best practices for small business interoffice messaging.

Keep Messages Concise And Pointed

Keeping your messages short and to the point is a great practice for your interoffice messenger. In fact, sending unnecessarily long messages is one of the most common mistakes made with business messaging platforms. Having to sit and read through long messages typically reduces team productivity and efficiency. Therefore, keep messages to about two lines or so. If you need more, try to schedule a video call, a meeting, or send an email if the matter isn’t urgent. Surely, keeping your messages concise allows your team to maintain high efficiency levels while reading chats.

Determine Basic Rules

Determining some ground rules for the messenger’s use allows you to receive the social benefits of the tool while minimizing the risks of distraction and unauthorized use. Messaging chats can often be distracting when they’re used to talk about sports or television shows. However, messaging about non-business issues continues to build camaraderie between employees. In fact, this camaraderie significantly reduces turnover and increases engagement by up to 700%. Additionally, messengers can be unintended sources of harassment and abuse, if they’re misused to discuss a colleague’s mannerisms or outfit, for example. Therefore, clearly define your expectations regarding the tool’s usage, and reiterate them over time, to maintain efficient messaging. Absolutely, laying some ground rules for the messenger’s use provides significant productivity and engagement increases.

Group/Team Organization

Organizing groups by teams, projects, or departments is a great way to organize your communications using an interoffice messenger. By creating groups based around departments, you ensure that department gets a place to communicate and share feedback as you choose the right business structure. Organizing groups by project is also beneficial for groups such as sales and support teams. Additionally, organizing users by region allows you to involve all employees no matter their location. This way, remote users as well as those in office can interact efficiently with each other. Certainly, organize groups based on teams, projects, and departments to provide the most efficient work environment possible.

Pay Attention

Paying attention to what you’re doing is an aspect often overlooked when using interoffice messaging tools. Typically, it’s quite easy to misclick and select the wrong recipient for messages. Especially if there are a lot of common names in your office, such as John or Jane. Additionally, anyone with one of these common names lose efficiency due to opening/reading messages that weren’t meant for them. Additionally, if your message contains sensitive or otherwise privileged information, sending it to the wrong recipient often leads to significant consequences. Pay attention to the spelling, grammar, and syntax of your messages, as well. This way, you avoid seeming unprofessional to recipients. Definitely, pay attention to recipients and the contents of your message to maintain work efficiency and professionalism.

Choose The Right Communication Channels

Interoffice messengers are great, but not always the best communication tool, depending on the message you’re trying to send. While they often work well for employee recognition and rewards, their public nature makes them not a great place for personal discussions or constructive feedback. Consider a message’s length when choosing which platform to send it. If a response requires three or more sentences, it would be better to send a good email, or schedule a meeting. This way, you can take in non-verbal cues when dealing with complex issues. Of course, choosing the right communication channel for the message you’re sending keeps your messenger working efficiently.

There is a myriad of best practices for small business interoffice messengers. One practice involves keeping your messages short and to the point so your team reads them efficiently. Another is to determine basic rules that prevent the misuse of the program. Third, organizing teams, projects, or departments into their own groups provides the most efficient work environment possible. Paying attention to your messages’ content, syntax, and recipients allows efficiency and professionalism to be maintained across the workplace. Finally, choosing the right channel for the message you need to send maximizes the efficiency of your messenger. When searching for small business interoffice messaging best practices, consider the practices described above.

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