10 Misconceptions About Instant Messaging for Business
There are more instant messaging accounts than there are people on the planet. In fact, business estimates put the number of instant messaging accounts at over 8.6 billion.
Here’s the first crucial question: Which instant messaging apps are your team members using?
Statistics tell us the most popular chat programs:
- Roughly 56% of employees use Slack.
- Skype is still used by 12.5% of employees.
The majority of people in your organization are already using some form of chat tool.
The world of Shadow IT makes it impossible to know how many of your staff are using chat tools not designed for business. Since your company does not know the scale of the usage of these apps, your business also does not know the risks it is being exposed to by apps that are not secure, fit for purpose, or GDPR compliant.
In this article, we are going to tell you the 10 things every savvy executive and decision-maker must know about instant messaging for business.
What Should You Know About Team Chat Apps?
While more and more enterprises have been using instant messaging apps for some time, many misconceptions still exist. The result has been a multitude of news stories on hacks and issues with WhatsApp, Zoom, Telegram, Slack, Signal, and Microsoft Teams, to name a few.
There are big differences between the usage, functionalities, security, compliance standard, and overall quality of consumer vs. enterprise-grade apps.
In the early 2000s, researchers had already found many benefits instant messaging would bring to enterprises. Twenty years on, and there are still many misconceptions keeping organisations and their workforce from embracing instant messaging for business.
Let’s take a look at the ten most common misconceptions today and what you need to know about them.
1. WhatsApp, Zoom, and Facebook Messenger are the highest standard of IM app
The most common misconception is that consumer-grade apps are fit for the task. Since so many people use WhatsApp, it is safe to say that it is the best, right? Wrong.
Secure enterprise messaging apps work on entirely different principles and are built with your professional needs in mind. Instant messaging for business needs to accomplish a few crucial tasks:
- Maximize security for your team and your data with enterprise-grade encryption and protection.
- Help your team collaborate more efficiently while eliminating distractions.
- Provide the communication tools you need to manage your people and projects effectively.
Apps like Messenger, WhatsApp, and Zoom do not meet all these criteria.
Messagenius is different because we built it from the ground up to provide secure instant messaging for business use, not just personal chats. While Messagenius is user-friendly and set out like a consumer-grade app, the built-in features that keep your workplace secure and connected are entirely different.
Read more on the high-quality features that make up a great secure enterprise messaging app.
2. Instant Messaging Apps are Always Distracting and Counter-Productive
If you use an app for work that your employees use to keep in touch with family and friends, then yes, it can be distracting.
Just as the offline environment around employees needs to promote work and productivity, so should the chat environment.
Secure enterprise messaging app is designed to offer fast, real-time communication in the workplace, increasing efficiency and productivity. Your team can use enterprise instant messaging software for video calling, screen sharing, group chats, project management, and simple text messaging. These collaboration tools will help your team get the most from each other.
According to a study by Software Advice, on nearly 150 employees using enterprise-grade messaging apps for work, 66% found it easier to overcome small issues faster. 70% agreed they saved time via instant messaging rather than phone calls or emails, and 21% saw a moderate to a significant increase in their productivity.
3. Creates silos between teams and colleagues
For enterprises concerned that business instant messaging apps will decrease teamwork and collaboration, as well as face-to-face communication, there is no evidence that instant messaging services have a bigger impact than any other communication tool.
However, a study conducted in 2018 found that reducing workplace distraction increased team productivity. The study also found that the biggest distractions at work were small talk with colleagues, meetings, phone calls, and office noise.
Adding an instant messenger will create an environment that allows for fewer outside distractions but increases camaraderie. Your teams can use group chats and even group video chat to stay in touch and reduce the barriers to getting stuff done.
Professor Amabile, who co-authored The Progress Principle, says, “People are more creative and productive when they experience more positive inner work life, including more positive emotions, stronger motivation toward the work itself and more positive perceptions of the organisation.”
4. Management has no control
That may be true with consumer-grade apps; however, at Messagenuis, we know that being a leader means knowing how well your team is doing, how productive each department is, and the importance of having a solid overview of your enterprise.
With a secure enterprise messaging app, you can count on having all this detail, as well as being able to remove people from specific chats, creating personal conversations, inform when you are available, and many more features.
Read more on the special features Messagenius offers Admins.
5. Secure enterprise messaging apps do not have special features over WhatsApp or Zoom.
The quick answer is they do. Secure enterprise messaging apps offer many more features than any consumer-grade app can ever provide.
As per the point above, managers and IT leaders have a dedicated dashboard with key analytics, but they can count on several other great features. Such as self-destructing messages, blast messages to reach your entire organisation, message delivery tracking, biometric authentication, to name a few.
Want to know more? Check out all the great features offered by Messagenius.
6. Instant messaging chats are a high-level security risk
Security and privacy are a primary concern for any enterprise. It is also the reason why enterprises do not invest in instant messaging apps. If you are looking at WhatsApp, Zoom, or Slack, for example, then yes, privacy policies are ambiguous, and security breaches are a constant worry.
Enterprise messaging apps offer stringent security, and your privacy is not a commodity to sell to the highest bidder.
These enterprise-grade apps are created so that your organisation can share and store sensitive data in a secure and, more importantly, compliant IT environment.
Test Messagenius out today to make your enterprise secure.
7. Instant messaging apps can cost a lot of money, and they don’t provide a good ROI.
For many, adding instant messaging programs to the workforce does not provide ROI, but they are wrong.
A failure to implement business messaging apps decreases the productivity of high-skill employees and management by 20-25%, according to McKinsey and Company.
Secure enterprise messaging apps benefit businesses in terms of team calls/chats, file sharing, incident reports, data sharing, and productivity.
But the benefits do not stop at the technical aspects of business messaging apps. By introducing the right instant messaging app in your workplace, you are investing in a complete transformation of your workplace culture, driven by employee productivity. Using white label instant messaging software, such as Messagenius, also helps you reinforce your brand every time your employees log in.
8. Instant Messaging apps are difficult to manage in a professional environment
Secure enterprise messaging apps, like Messagenius, help IT leaders keep the work-chat environment professional.
These security-centric apps will add value to your day-to-day business tasks. For example, one of Messagenius’ features is admin control rooms.
Admins can create public or private channels for one or all the operators online, who, apart from having a regular chat list, also have a dashboard from where they manage all the requests and work-related issues.
Discover our features such as Live Location, and create a seamless and secure working environment.
9. Email is better than instant messaging
Resistance to change is one of the biggest threats to any enterprise. As generation Z, and millennials before them, enter the workforce, the change will be required for any enterprise to continue to exist.
As the exchange of information moves faster towards ‘real-time’ communication, email can no longer handle all the requirements of a modern workplace. The best instant messaging apps support video conferencing, voice chat, audio calls, and group chat. All these add to the communication options for businesses.
Instant messaging apps are fundamental to enterprises and are to be used together with email.
10. Instant messaging can be intrusive
Even email is considered to be intrusive, so much so that France introduced a law against emailing employees after 6 pm. In Italy and the UK, there are no laws but, are they necessary?
With the right internal communication strategy, instant messaging does not need to be intrusive, and you can achieve the desired work-life balance.
Your business can schedule the interactions between team members. Video conferencing can be arranged for core hours. Voice and video messages can be left for convenient times. File sharing in the chat app lets teams share their work at any time.
Bottom Line
Secure enterprise messaging apps are not merely technologies for the future or only specific industries.
They help improve productivity, facilitate collaboration, quicken the execution of business processes, provide a high level of security, reap assured ROI, and add value to the short and long-term business operations.
The dynamic nature of secure enterprise messaging apps means that they are an integral part of a variety of workplaces.
Are you ready to reap the benefits of Messagenius? Do not waste any more time, Contact Us, and empower your enterprise today.