How Salesforce enables collaboration- An insiders perspective into Chatter
When Atos CEO banned internal emails in the year 2016 it was not that the intention was to stop internal collaboration from happening. In fact, we could say that the reverse held true. Modern enterprises are moving away from traditional modes of communication like emails and to platforms like Slack, TRello and Salesforce service cloud Chatter.
When it comes to sharing information and social collaboration, most businesses are fast adopting these modern platforms. Modern workers collaborate in their personal lives using tools like Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp and Google Hangout; social networks and chat apps are the more popular mode of communication. To help businesses stay up with the times, Salesforce offers Chatter-a social collaboration tool that allows employees to share information in modern ways.
A powerful enterprise social network and collaboration platform, Chatter caters to businesses of all sizes. It brings the social capabilities of 21st-century apps to the workplace, making way for interaction within an organization. Within a company’s internal network, it lets users track information, follow people, and join groups to work collaboratively. Let’s see how Chatter enables enterprise collaboration with its advanced features.
Eliminates communication barriers
Chatter encourages inter-departmental communication and increases transparency since all communications occur in a public space. Information is not ‘siloed’ anymore and departments can track each other’s progress. For instance, relying on emails for communication can often lead to information gaps between different departments. If two parties are working on a Sales deal and have asymmetric information, they may not always be on the same page in terms of real progress. Chatter eliminates such knowledge gaps by empowering the two parties to communicate in real time and stay updated on progress.
Chatter groups can be created for employees interested in a common topic, enabling improved collaboration. With ‘Chatter Now’, an instant messaging app, employees can communicate in real-time through text messages, images, and videos. ‘Chatter Thanks’ is another unique feature that lets users drop a quick thank-you note to anyone on Chatter –an innovative way to appreciate employee efforts and motivate them.
Allows team-wide communication
Chatter links each employee to every piece of data with ease. It eliminates version mania since the most recent copy of the project is available for everyone to see. Files can be attached in the app itself, making it easier to edit and review projects. Chatter is also an incredibly useful platform for senior executives to interact with junior staff, thus simplifying the feedback process.
For instance, a manager can create a group with team members and keep adding more members when required. Using Chatter, the manager can share files with team members, @-mention them with instructions, questions, ask for documents, follow-up, comment and interact with the team. In this way, he can efficiently share information with all tasks in a centralized platform instead of an email chain. Members can then reference real-time details on specific accounts. If the manager wants to view details related to an account, all he needs to do is click the ‘Feed’ tab to see the recent activity, updates, and comments
Quick action and decision making
On Chatter, accounts, campaigns, projects, and service cases are all easily accessible. This means employees can quickly collaborate and share information. Users can share screenshots, collaborate on upcoming events, provide visibility on accounts etc., regardless of where they are. Instead of using multiple apps and tools to get work done, users only need to go to one place.
By @mentioning another user, employees in a group can speed up response time to a critical issue. Moreover, companies can create their own custom actions with point-and-click tools, allowing employees to perform tasks without having to leave the feed.With full mobile capabilities, employees can work on the go, wherever they are and take quick actions to comments, feedback, new projects etc
Users can choose who to share data with
While working on highly sensitive information, users may not want to share some data with everyone. Chatter allows users to privately collaborate with a handful of people they trust. It makes use of Salesforce’s secure cloud to keep all proprietary information protected. At times, you might also want to share specific files with your customer while working on a project. ‘Chatter External’ is designed precisely for this purpose. It allows users to grant limited access to customers in specific groups. This proves useful if employees are working on something that requires constant feedback from the customer.
Requires no training
The best thing about Chatter is that it doesn’t require any training. The modern workforce is familiar with feeds, @mentions, #hashtags etc. By integrating these new-age communication methods in a business system, Chatter allows employees to get started quickly without spending days understanding the workings of a platform. Daily business processes and approvals are integrated with the social feed, allowing employees to intuitively use them. In this way, the need for training shrinks dramatically.
In a high-tech, social-media driven world, Chatter offers the perfect business solution for information sharing and collaboration. Companies looking to quicken decision making and improve collaboration must adopt Chatter as an invaluable tool of the 21stcentury
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