20 cool business communication tools that organizations must consider

Business communication tools are critical for organizations to succeed. One of the main communications challenges that most organizations are facing today is the silo effect where departments, teams or even employees from the same team don’t communicate enough. Workplace communication statistics show that 86% of employees and executives cite the lack of effective communication as the main cause for workplace failures. The main reason for this is a majority of organizations are using business communication tools that are disparate and disjointed. They are not effective or reliable.

Also, the business communication tools used by organizations are woefully inadequate in handling the steadily growing remote workforce. A study points out that 56% of employees don’t get the right tools to perform their day-to-day activities.

By switching to a Saas-based business communication tools companies can save in multiple ways. According to a study, organizations that are able to handle their business communication effectively can increase their productivity by as much as 25% and if their business communication tool could handle remote workers effectively, they can save as much as 78% on annual operating expenses.

Here is a list of 20 best business communication tools that will help you boost productivity by improving employee engagement and overcoming all communication challenges.

20 best business communication tools

1. Clariti

Clariti is one of the most cost-effective team communication tools for businesses to organize all their communications in one place. Clariti supports all communication forms including chats, emails, cloud-based documents, voice calls and social feeds. Clariti uses TopicFolders to automatically connect all your related conversations no matter which medium was used. For example, you can combine related chats, emails, calls, documents, and even to-do alerts in TopicFolders. TopicFolders eliminates the need to search for information, which is otherwise stored in separate silos.

When you work from a TopicFolder, all your related interactions including chats, shared files, social feeds, and emails regarding that topic will be connected and stored in that folder. Later, when you want to refer to a conversation that you have had on a particular topic, you don’t have to search for the information in different places like your email inbox, chat app, or your social feeds separately. All you have to do is look inside the relevant TopicFolder for all your communication history. So, TopicFolders are an inbuilt mechanism to organize all your communication as it happens, without any effort on your part.

2. Skype

Using Skype, you can connect to anyone from anywhere. Calls can be made to a person’s mobile phone and their landline. It also allows for sending text messages with end-to-end encryption so you can rest assured your conversations are private. You can use it on a multitude of devices like your PC, tablet, or smartphone

3. Asana

Asana is a cloud-based project management tool that is capable of hosting real-time communication for multiple users. Instead of using emails for general announcements and another application such as instant-messaging tools for informal chats, Asana handles both, allowing users to save time and cut costs.

4. HipChat

HipChat is one of the best on-premise instant messaging tools. HipChat enables your team to work better together by making it easy to share ideas, updates, code and files in real-time, anywhere

5. Salesforce Chatter

Chatter is a Salesforce real-time collaboration application that lets users work together, talk to each other, and share information. Chatter connects, engages, and motivates users to work efficiently across the organization, regardless of role or location.

6. Viber

Viber is more than a smartphone app; but also works directly on your PC. It’s more than a messaging app as it offers numerous calling and messaging features. You can choose voice or video calls, especially if you need a face-to-face call. Group chats and calls are also possible with Viber. While many will use this from their smartphone, you can sync it will your PC to transfer all your calls.

7. Jitsi

Jitsi is a free and open-source tool that allows video conferencing for both your smartphone and PC. It allows for live streaming and recording. It’s simple, secure, and scalable for when your business gets bigger.

8. Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts is easy to use whether you’re talking with one person or a group of people. Some of its great features are voice and video calls, chat, video conferencing, multimedia messaging, events, and live-streaming meetings. You can connect with up to ten people around the world.

9. Cisco Webex Team

Cisco Webex Teams goes beyond a conventional instant messaging and provides added voice and video calling capabilities. Cisco Webex is an app for continuous teamwork. Move work forward in secure workspaces where everyone can contribute at any time with messaging, file sharing, white-boarding, video meetings, calling and more. It works on virtually any device.

10. TeamViewer Meeting

Apart from just instant messaging, TeamViewer Meeting lets you hold face-to-face HD VoIP videoconferences and audio calling, with your coworkers or your entire team, scheduled group meetings (up to 300 people), desktop screen sharing and session recording. It has all the essential meeting tools to collaborate securely with your teams and clients, from anywhere, anytime. TeamViewer Meeting installs on your desktop or mobile phone for quick access.

11. Workplace

Workplace developed by Facebook is more than just an instant messaging platform. It facilitates online groupwork, instant messaging, video conferencing, mobile app, video chat, instant messaging, unlimited file storage space, desktop notifications and news sharing etc.

12. Chatwork

Chatwork is an all-round instant messaging chat app that is designed to help global teams communicate, collaborate and increase productivity. The platform includes secure messaging, video chat, task management and file sharing functionality.

13. Troop Messenger

Troop Messenger is one of the most comprehensive office chat application with amazing security, facilitating safe and secured business data sharing. It offers a collaborative work forum for businesses. This business chat application is one among all group chat apps which comes with unlimited group creation. It is not only instant messaging for business but also lets you share files of diverse format along with current location and contacts.

14. RingCentral Glip

RingCentral Glip Pro is a free, unlimited, easy-to-use instant messaging tool that also offers high quality and high-availability video and audio conferencing, seamlessly integrated with team messaging, file sharing, contact, task, and calendar management — resulting in a Smart Video Meetings experience.

15. Discord

Discard does more than what an instant messaging software does. Using Discord, you can create a home for your communities and friends, where you can stay close and have fun over text, voice, and video.

16. Amazon Chime

Amazon Chime lets you go beyond instant messaging. It lets you choose the communication options that are best suited for your business. You have the option to choose from meetings, chat, and business calling or use Voice Connector to direct your voice traffic over the internet. With Amazon Chime, you have the flexibility to choose the communication option that fits with your business needs, and the freedom to scale up or down as needed.

17. Flowdock

Flowdock brings all of your conversations, work items and tools into one place. Using Flowdock you can prioritize work, solve problems, search and organize across teams, locations and time zones. Flowdock is available in both iOS App Store and Android Store.

18. Jivesoftware

Using Jive you can unite your people, content and resources in one easy-to-use platform. It can ignite communications in every direction: top-down, bottom-up, peer-to-peer.

19. Jandi

Jandi helps your team to easily organize work group chats, smart search files and more in a single unified platform — Chat, collaborate & unlimited video calls. Using Jandi you can search by keyword, chat room, file type, date etc.

20. Mattermost

Mattermost brings all your team communication into one place, making it searchable and accessible anywhere. You can use Mattermost from your iOS or Android phones and tablets or with installed apps on Windows, Linux and Mac.

By signing up for these business communication tools discussed above, you can boost employee engagement, collaborate seamlessly with your remote team and boost your productivity.