Harnessing the right business communication tools will be crucial in 2023.
Businesses face a multitude of challenges going into the new year, from inflation to rising cybercrime. One of the most persistent and omnipresent business challenges, though, is communication.
Efficient communication is a major element of customer satisfaction, and consequently of business success. 96% of customers say that it plays a central role in whether they stay loyal to a brand, according to a survey by Microsoft.
Similarly, smooth internal communication between team members can help businesses eliminate friction-losses, misunderstandings, and data siloing. Ultimately, this can help you save significant amounts of time and money.
But how to achieve this gold standard of customer and internal communication? Here are five best business communication tools to help you.
1 – NextivaONE
Heading the list is NextivaONE, an all-round tool for customer and internal communication.
It centralizes all the most popular communication channels that customers use to reach out to businesses, such as calls, texts, and email. It then allows users to create threaded conversations, which contain all interactions with a particular customer across channels. That makes it easy for team members to provide the best possible customer support in continuity.
Furthermore, additional functionalities such as call notes and surveys are also available. The former lets users quickly attach notes to interactions with customers, either for their personal future reference or for their colleagues to consult. The latter makes it possible to send out quick surveys, for instance to gauge customer satisfaction.
Another upside of NextivaONE is that it also simplifies internal communication. Team members can jump on voice and video calls, exchange messages, and share files.
At higher tiers, NextivaONE also offers integrations with platforms such as the Salesforce CRM and Microsoft.
Pricing starts at $18.95 per user and month for the Essential plan. The Professional plan ($22.95 per user and month) adds unlimited audio and video meetings, text messaging, and team collaboration tools. The highest tier, Enterprise (32.95 per user and month) also gives users access to features such as call and conference recording and voice analytics.
2 – Slack
A second fantastic business communication tool that can help you eliminate friction losses is Slack.
Slack is a messaging tool to help your team communicate at different levels. Each user has a profile and can message others. More than that, though, they can create channels and add certain users to communicate about a particular topic. These could be team-internal channels or channels focused on a particular project that spans departments.
In addition, Slack’s higher tiers also allow team members to start video calls and to share files, with up to 1 TB of storage per member.
Another upside of Slack is that it provides native integrations with a wide range of other business tools, such as Salesforce, Google Workspace, and Jira.
Slack offers a free basic version for an unlimited number of users. Paid versions start at $8 per user and month and make it possible to access an unlimited searchable message history, host video calls, add apps, and use integrations.
3 – Asana
Next up, Asana is a customizable project management tool to boost team collaboration. Like Slack, it offers a multitude of integrations.
Asana allows users to track both day-to-day and project-related tasks. Team members can create projects, assign roles, distribute tasks with attached deadlines, share documents, and communicate via asynchronous comment threads.
Ultimately, this business communication tool streamlines project management and helps team members keep on top of their to-do-lists.
Other plus points of Asana are its user-friendly interface and workload management features to avoid overburdening individual team members.
Asana’s free version is available for teams of up to 15 members. After that, pricing starts at $10.99 per user and month for the Premium plan. At the Enterprise tier, additional functionalities such as Proofing, Portfolios, and Goals become available.
4 – Google Workspace
If your team frequently collaborates on documents, having a solid cloud-based solution is essential. Google Workspace is the rarely-contested top contender in this department.
Formerly known as G Suite, it combines a wide range of apps. Users can share documents via Drive, create and jointly edit text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations using Docs, Sheets, and Presentations, and synchronize their meetings using Calendar. Google Meet also makes voice and video calls a breeze.
Most Google Workspace tools are available for free for individual users. For organizations, pricing starts at $6 per user and month.
5 – Trello
Finally, there is Trello, another project-based collaboration solution. This platform is particularly suited to the needs of smaller teams.
Trello uses the Kanban method to allow users to create boards and track tasks that need to be done, are in process, or have been completed. It’s a basic but efficient approach.
Plus, Trello offers a huge number of additional apps and integrations with platforms like Jira, Clockify, and Dropbox.
The basic version is free. For more functionalities, boards, and workspace, pricing starts at $5 per user and month.
Conclusion: The Best Business Communication Tools in 2023
Making communication efficient is one of the biggest challenges for businesses going into 2023. By harnessing the tools above and assessing which of their functionalities best suits your team’s needs, you’ll be able to rise to this challenge, overcome it, and take your communication to the next level in the new year.
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