Effective communication is essential for boosting team productivity and skyrocketing business growth.
It helps members of every team to perfectly sync with each other for sharing ideas, exchanging information, discussing strategies, and solving customer problems — all of which are essential for growing a business.
The good thing is that there is already an abundance of communication tools out in the market that enables teams to stay connected and productive.
But despite the wealth of communication tools, there is still a fundamental disconnect between teams that is ultimately jeopardizing their productivity and causing workplace failures.
This is especially true for teams that juggle between internal and external communication — with team members as well as customers.
According to Salesforce research, 86% of employees admit ineffective communication being the primary reason for workplace failures.
A study by Economist Intelligence Unit also found that ineffective communication and lack of collaboration can hinder the growth of a business and result in:
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So what is still causing the disconnectivity between teams?
In this article, we’ll look closely at what gave rise to communication tools, why they haven’t resolved team connectivity issues, and how businesses can remedy this situation.
Customer communication and team collaboration tools have been in the market for decades. But it was the COVID-19 Pandemic that accelerated their adoption. And since then, the market for communication tools has been growing like wildfire.
According to the latest research by Statista, the communication software market size saw a whopping 55% increase, from $11 billion in 2019 to $17 billion in 2022.
During this time period, the majority of companies shifted to remote work, and teams were left with no choice other than to adjust to new communication tools. In fact, even after the lockdown restrictions started lifting, many companies offered their employees to work from home permanently.
But even with such an unprecedented boom of communication tools helping teams to connect with each other as well as customers, it failed to resolve the disconnectivity issue between teams.
Ironically, the main reason behind team disconnectivity is the rise of abundant communication tools.
And this is especially true for teams that deal with customers and internal team members.
You see, many teams nowadays have traditional email accounts and various workplace messaging apps such as Skype, Slack, etc., depending on the individual preferences of each department head. On top of that, team members often create several group chats to discuss projects strictly.
In addition, many companies utilize team communication and collaboration solutions such as Asana, Trello, Monday.com, etc., focusing on project management.
Apart from these tools, customer-facing teams have to use many additional tools, such as a cloud phone system to helpdesk software as well as customer relationship management systems to centralize each customer's information.
Looking at this scenario, teams feeling disconnectivity is not surprising at all.
After all, how can one juggle between so many tools, checking notifications, updating status, responding to customers’ requests, etc., on multiple devices sometimes?
Not only can this lead to less productivity, but communication can also become siloed in individual tools, hampering your business growth.
This begs the question… What can be done to close this communication disconnect gap among teams?
Many industry leaders argue that integrations between communication tools can be a possible path forward.
Many communication tools allow native integrations, enabling team members to exchange data and synchronize conversations.
For example, you can connect Slack to Salesforce, Trello to Zoom, etc. And in case a communication tool does not provide native integration, you can always leverage Zapier to create integrated workflows.
However, what you need to know about integrations through Zapier is that it comes with plenty of restrictions and downsides.
For instance, integrations through Zapier might work when you need to coordinate one or two communication tools with each other. But further integrations can easily become untenable due to technical bugs and complex workflows.
Alternatively, you can consider utilizing Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) platforms. Unlike native integrations with high limitations, UCaaS platforms eliminate the need for individual tools by bundling different communication channels such as email, messaging, voice, and video calls together.
The only downside of UCaaS platforms is that they focus only on one type of communication at a time, meaning that you can bundle together either internal or external communication tools.
In this aspect, the UCaaS platforms do not resolve the communication disconnectivity issue among teams in a complete manner.
But the good news is that businesses no longer need to rely on UCaaS platforms to bridge the communication gap between their teams.
There is now a new breed of integrated communication platforms that combines customer and team communication in one place.
NextivaONE, for example, is one such pioneering platform that truly integrates all communication channels, both internal teams and customer-facing, to help businesses overcome communication siloing and completely eliminate the disconnect between teams.
The vast sea of communication tools has only increased team disconnectivity rather than resolving it. And traditional solutions, such as integration between tools and UCaaS platforms, have shown limited success in solving the issue.
The only solution to fully resolve the disconnectivity between teams is a centralized communication solution that truly combines all avenues of communication.
Therefore, businesses must consider investing in sustainable universal communication solutions to take a step towards increasing team productivity and minimizing friction loss in this new hybrid workplace.
