Enterprise Messaging: Keep Your Business Out Of Personal Messaging Accounts

Enterprise messaging can help you resolve problems that you may not even realize your business has. When it comes to implementing new technology, businesses typically lags behind personal use. With the introduction of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other messaging apps, failure to incorporate messaging technologies into their business model has become a serious problem for many companies.

The ease with which messaging apps let people share information has meant that many employees are accustomed to simply sending or posting information quickly. Employees don’t want to stop what they are doing and log into a specific email address behind a secure network because it takes a lot longer than simply opening up their favorite messaging app on their phone.

Enterprise messaging is about more than just ensuring a consistent tone and message to your customers. It means giving your employees the right tools to respond quickly to customer requests. From compliance issues and loss of configuration control to reduced security and loss of business, there are many reasons why businesses need to implement a company wide separate enterprise messaging app.

Reducing and Eliminating Regulation and Compliance Issues with Enterprise Messaging

Government regulations dictate many different aspects of almost every industry. Ensuring that communications with customers are secured is usually a high priority. Regulations such as HIPPA compliance and government contractors have very strict guidelines to protect personal information, confidential data, and classified documents from being compromised.

When employees use their personal messaging account on their own phone, compliance with those laws is broken. If your employees do this, you have no record of it. This fact can become a significant problem during an audit. In the event that there is a data breach at any of these messaging apps, you won’t know that your company’s data and information has been compromised. It will be impossible to figure out which documents are potentially affected because the exchange was conducted over a private account. This is a significant breech in both compliance and the trust your customers put in your company.

Minimizing Configuration Control Breeches

Once your employees start to use their own private messaging accounts for business, it will be difficult to get them to change to your business account. The more often they use personal messaging accounts (instead of a business account), the less able you are  to maintain configuration controls over documents and data. The sooner you can introduce enterprise messaging to your employees, the more likely they are to keep all communication separate.

If one person on a project team decides it is quicker to simply send an image or data over a messaging app because they are at lunch, this may allow the team to keep working. But there is now another version of the image or document in circulation.

The more platforms that are used to send information, especially files, the more misinformation that is potentially introduced. More importantly, teams will begin to use multiple versions of a document or data set. So, they may have several different “latest” versions, none of which are complete.

Avoiding Messaging Inconsistencies by Providing the Right Communication Tools

The introduction of messaging apps as a way of communicating between a team or employees and clients means  the team or your company has less control over messaging. If one of your clients sends out an email with questions about a particular service, status of a request, or issue, it is best that there is one platform used to respond to that client. It can be confusing for clients if they receive an email from one of your employees with different information than they receive from another employee over an instant messaging app. You also don’t have a record of what the employee or employees who used the messaging app said to the client.

People tend to be much more casual over messaging apps as well. This can make them feel more comfortable saying things that they would avoid saying over a business account. They may continue to be casual over an enterprise messaging app, but people do tend to be more careful when using business tools. Simply logging into the enterprise messenger reminds them that they are working and to censure what they say. By only having a personal account available, they are doing the company a favor by quickly responding to a request or inquiry. However, they are introducing potential contradictions of your company’s official policy. This leads to an even greater problem for your business.

Separate Enterprise Messaging Can Prevent Loss of Business

Employees start to develop relationships with your clients outside of your controlled platform? They can bond with your clients in a way that could be detrimental to business. You have no idea what they are telling your clients, and there is no record that you can refer to since communication is over the employee’s personal messaging account. Even if employees aren’t saying bad things about your company, they could be telling your customers about new opportunities that they are considering.

If those employees leave your company, they can take your customers with them. After all, the bonds are between the customer and your employee, not between you and the customer. The personal relationships that people tend to form over these apps means that the customer will feel comfortable leaving you to stay with the person they have been working with. Your employee may be starting a new business, in which case the customer wants to support them. It is just as bad if the employee takes your clients to one of your competitors.

Be Fair And Give Your Employees All of the Tools of Today

Even if your employees don’t steal your customers, it is wrong to expect them to use their personal accounts to conduct your business. Yes, many people prefer to take the easier route. They are using a messaging app while on the go, but it will foster some resentment over time. Customers expect fast turn arounds, and they are going to expect customers to respond immediately. You don’t have enterprise messaging platform? Your employees are going to feel pressured to deliver using their own personal accounts to meet client expectation. After all, if they don’t deliver quickly, they are the ones to hear about it, not you.

It is also unfair to expect your employees to conduct this kind of work on their personal time anyway. It is never a good idea to acclimate your employees to the idea of doing work over their own personal accounts either. If they begin to speak informally or in less professional ways with clients, it isn’t entirely their fault because you have failed to give them the necessary tools to work with. Customers often expect instant responses. There are so many different ways to communicate quickly that we rarely have to wait for anything. Your employees are simply meeting those expectations by using whatever means are available to them, even if it means mixing work with their personal life.

Keeping up with current technological trends is not necessary, but once a practice is widely accepted in people’s private lives, it is not going to disappear. Messaging apps are well past the point of being a new and accepted innovation.

Providing Compliance and Data Ownership Focused Communication Solution

LeapXpert B2C messaging solution is a separate business desktop and mobile platform, which allows your employees to contact your clients on their favorite messengers. You can ensure that all information exchanges are secured in a way that complies with your industry regulations, and you can monitor any kind of questionable communications.

If there is a question, your employees will be able to quickly see if someone has already responded, and what information was provided. Ultimately, you will be much happier for having a tool specific to your business needs while providing your customers with the kind of instant responses that are often expected in today’s world. Apply: sales@leap.expert