The landscape of today’s modern workplace
Pandemic has made long-lasting and influential changes to every facet of our lives, including the modern workplace. In today’s new normal, remote and hybrid work environments have exploded in popularity. Businesses now rely on team communication tools to maintain day-to-day operations, uphold productivity, and create an optimized experience for employees across the globe.
These apps are customary to present-day business practices and even implement effective and precise communication. As technology advances and such tools evolve, they have even improved productivity and profitability across companies of all sizes.
Importance of team communication tools in hybrid workplace
There are many benefits of today’s modern hybrid workplace. It can offer organizations and team members improved flexibility, a more vital work-life balance, and higher productivity and participation.
Research has found that employers and employees alike are in favor of this working model. However, it’s essential to implement best practices to ensure the structure is successful and the business maintains a seamless flow.
- Maintain constant communication and connection
- Ensure consistency and streamlined organization
- Create an infrastructure across employees in all locations and time zones
It would not be possible to implement these best practices without the right team communication tool.
Why you should consider a team communication tool
Team communication tools provide essential tools that improve productivity, increase collaboration, and simplify business communications. Standard features within these tools include team chats, emails, video/audio calls, and shared cloud-based documents. But the crucial aspect is seamless and uninterrupted communication between multiple users.
Team chat apps and team communication tools are powerful and robust resources that reduce the burden of waiting for an email response or phone call. They boost productivity and create a business ecosystem where employees can seamlessly move between various methods of communication and organization. These tools provide the capabilities and solutions your business needs to work together in an effective remote and hybrid work environment.
How to select the best team communication tool for your needs
Now, you may be thinking – how do I choose which app? And where do I start? There are many options to choose from when considering your team communication and messaging platform. Some are newer than others. A few may lack features that are standout characteristics of the most well-known. To start, here are 25 of the best team communication tools that we endorse.
A lot goes into the decision process to ensure your team communication tool adds value to the company rather than creating unforeseen problems. Every platform is optimized for a different set of needs, so your team must select the features it needs to collaborate and improve efficiency properly. Quick and effective communication is critical to collaboration and success.
Here is our recommendation for team communication tools every business should consider as they make their selection in 2023. Each platform has a unique set of strengths and specific approaches to team communication and business organization. Some are new entrants, some well-established players. But as you wade through this list and make your selection, remember that you are probably best served by judging what you think will work best for your business and how your team is structured, then by simply considering large brand names or how long a tool has been around. These 25 team communication tools will help you and your team’s productivity skyrocket.
25 best team communication software for businesses
1. Clariti
Clariti is one of the best team communication tools that allows you to send & receive email, consume social media, chat, make voice calls, manage cloud documents, create to-dos, etc. Clariti’s subject chats provide context for every messaging. When team members can see the content of previous chats, they have a better understanding of the context of the current discussion. By being able to refer to previous conversations, team members can easily see what has been accomplished and what still needs to be done. This can help keep everyone on track and ensure that deadlines are met.
Clariti subject chats can serve as a repository for important information. When all messages are stored in a chat, they are easy to reference, search and get a better understanding of what is going on within the team or project. This can be helpful when team members need to find specific information or recall details from a previous conversation.
Clariti chats help to reduce the number of emails sent between team members. When all communications are stored in one place, team members can avoid sending multiple emails back and forth. This can save time and improve productivity.
2. Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams, one of the best team collaboration tools, brings together everything a team needs chat and threaded conversations, meetings & video conferencing, calling, content collaboration with the power of Microsoft 365 applications, and the ability to create and integrate apps and workflows that your business relies on.
Using Microsoft Teams, you can easily move between your work and personal account to stay organized throughout the day. Whether you’re sprinting towards a deadline or helping your kids with their homework, Teams can help you achieve more. Using Microsoft Teams you can do direct chat, group chat or create dedicated channels to communicate with the entire team.
You can make HD audio and video calls for scheduled face-to-face meetings from almost anywhere.
3. Missive
Missive redesigned the inbox with a business-first collaborative experience in mind. It is a team inbox and chat tool that empowers teams to truly collaborate around email, SMS, WhatsApp, Twitter, Messenger and live chat. With Missive, teams focus on growing their business.
4. FrontApp
FrontApp, a team collaboration software, powers the heart of business — the meaningful connections between teams and customers that lead to lasting relationships. Bringing email and apps together in a collaborative customer communication platform, FrontApp drives business impact by scaling the natural conversations that create customers for life.
5. Basecamp
Basecamp is an all-in-one team collaboration software for working remotely. Basecamp is more than just a project management tool — it’s a better way to work. Teams that switch to Basecamp are more productive and better organized. They communicate better and require fewer meetings. And they’re far more efficient than before.
6. FreeConferenceCall
FreeConferenceCall, a team communication tool, provides HD audio conferencing, screen sharing and video conferencing with up to 1,000 participants. Each account includes free online meetings packed with intuitive features: Host up to 1,000 video participants; access switch presenter, remote control and drawing tools; Record audio-visual presentations for live broadcast; chat privately or with all participants.
7. Zoom
Zoho Meeting is a virtual team communication tool using which you can host online meetings, share screen and join conferences with video collaboration in browser. The Zoho Meeting Chrome extension lets you host webinars and online meetings right from your Chrome browser without any downloads.
8. Cisco Webex
Cisco Webex, a team communication tool, allows teams to go 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.
9. Fleep.io
Combining messaging with file sharing and tasks, Fleep, a team collaboration tool, has everything you need to coordinate your team’s work from idea to execution. Conversations are at the heart of Fleep. Set them up around projects, teams or any specific topics to stay connected and discuss ideas. Highlight any decisions or plans on the conversation’s Pinboard and create tasks to coordinate execution.
10. Freshdesk
Freshdesk, a team collaboration software, packs a suite of powerful collaboration features that can help teams work efficiently to provide better support experiences for the customer. Agents can loop in teammates for discussions right inside tickets and can retain visibility into tickets even if another team is currently working on it. Teams can also split the tasks involved and work on them in parallel.
11. Hiverhq.com
Hiver, a team collaboration software, is the world’s first helpdesk built for Google Workspace. Hiver helps teams deliver fast and empathetic customer service, right from the tool they are already familiar with – Gmail. This means teams can assign, track, and collaborate on customer emails, as well as run the most advanced analytics and automations from the Gmail interface, without sacrificing any time on learning new software or switching tabs.
12. Zoho Workplace
Work is evolving, so are workspaces. Zoho Workplace, team collaboration software, unifies and centralizes your team’s workspace, simplifies file storage, and streamlines team communication. Zoho Workplace provides context, ensures continuity, enables convenience and fosters collaboration.
13. Chatwork
Chatwork, team collaboration software, is a group chat app for business. Secure messaging, video chat, task management and file sharing. Chatwork makes collaboration easy. Conversations, tasks, and information will always be at the palm of your hand with Chatwork. Working collaboratively with your team can make the task fun and it creates a more functional and balanced company.
14. Slack
Slack brings team communication into one place so you can get more work done, whether you belong to a large enterprise or a small business. Tick off your to-do list and make progress on your projects by bringing the right people, conversations, tools and information you need together. Slack is available on any device, so you can find and access your team and your work whether you’re at your desk or on the go. You can use Slack to communicate with your team and organize your conversations by topic, project or anything else that matters to your work.
You can message or call any person or group within your team. Share and edit documents and collaborate with the right people. Slack provides integrations with at least 1000 tools including Google Drive, Salesforce, Dropbox, Asana, Twitter, Zendesk and more
15. Google Workspace
Using Google Workspace, team collaboration software, you can work on a single document with team members or people outside your company. See edits as others type, communicate through built-in chat and ask questions in comments. Several team members can work at the same time, and every change is saved automatically.
Keep all your work in one place with secure access to your computer, phone or tablet. Quickly invite other team members to view, download and collaborate on any file – no email attachment needed. File updates are automatically saved and stored in Drive, so everyone can always have access to the latest version.
16. Spike
Spike focuses on the idea of conversational email. Repeating headers, signatures, and threads make email hard to read. Spike claims to clear the clutter and transform the email to a real time chat that’s easy to read. Spike’s intelligent priority inbox removes distractions by making important messages visible first, while low priority messages are removed to the side for later.
Shared notes and team chats keeps the team on track and informed and keeps the conversation moving. Team members can get up to speed in a glance and access all files ever shared with ease.
17. Twist
Twist, a team communication tool, focuses on providing a distraction-free space where teams can balance focused work with collaborative conversations. Twist eliminates the team’s need to spread discussions across email and chat apps by keeping information organized and transparent in Twist.
Team discussions can be structured in topic-specific channels. However, where Twist is different than other channel-type chat apps is that it provides the ability to create side-bar conversations in group channels. These conversations are called Threads. While everyone in the channel can read the thread contents, only the team members invited to participate in the thread can respond. Twist claims that by maintaining these threads, invited team members can respond at leisure with thoughtful responses, instead of trying to keep up with the frenetic pace of group channel communications. This is the antidote to Slack where the information overload in channels can get overwhelming.
18. Flowdock
Like other chat tools mentioned in this blog, Flowdock provides real-time chat for teams. Flows are the heart of Flowdock, they are open spaces for teams to converse and collaborate. Since the parent of Flowdock is CA Technologies, an enterprise computer software technology provider, Flowdock’s focus is on software development companies. The key differentiator in Flowdock is the integration of third-party apps. Integrations are available for project management, software version control, customer support, and software deployment monitoring among other applications commonly used by software development companies.
19. Asana
Asana, one of the top team collaboration tools, helps you plan, organize, and manage your team’s work, from start to finish. It is good project management software that also acts as a collaboration and communication tool. You can coordinate team tasks, so everyone knows who’s doing what. Share feedback, files, and status updates. Plus, get a complete view of work so teams tackle the right tasks at the right time.
Managing projects is hard work. It’s easy to lose track of all the moving pieces—and tough to stay up to date. That’s when things fall through the cracks. Asana helps you to organize projects, make communication easy, and meet deadlines. Asana helps you to keep conversations with teammates, clients, and vendors in one place, and keep everyone on the same page.
20. Trello
Trello, a team collaboration tool, is a visual tool for organizing your work and life. Trello has more than 35 million registered users who organize all their projects at work, at home, or anywhere in between. Whether you’re planning a website design project, vacation, or company off-site, Trello is infinitely customizable and flexible for your every need.
Similar to Asana, Trello is more focused on project management than raw communication/chatting, but it still has a great deal of flexibility built in and does allow for dynamic conversations within its tools. It’s structured around pulling different “cards” into pre-defined statuses, e.g. “in planning”, “in progress”, “done”, which leads to a sleek, simple, flexible UI.
21. Google Chat
Google Chat is an intelligent and secure team collaboration software built for teams. From direct messages to team chat rooms, Google Chat provides an integrated platform that makes team communication easy and efficient. The current version is for Google Workspace customers only.
Google Chat’s main selling point is how deeply it’s integrated with other Google Suite products, like Gmail and Google Calendar, which are commonly used across industries. It revolves around creating “rooms”, which users can then join to discuss various topics.
22. Flock
Flock is one of the popular team collaboration tools for modern teams and businesses. Flock packs more features under chat and channels and it is relatively more affordable when compared with bigger counterparts like Slack. It supports some of the features like shared notes, reminders, to-dos, polls etc. You can also make audio and video calls and share your screen with your remote team. Flock is available in all formats like web, desktop and mobile. One of the most distinguishable features of Flock is it supports the app in 4 different languages.
23. Chanty
Chanty is a cloud-based team collaboration software that combines communication, project management, and automation to help teams work together more effectively. Chanty helps teams improve productivity and business communication. Unlimited message history, task management, file sharing and powerful notifications organize and save your day. Chanty helps you to collaborate and communicate effectively in one place.
Chanty helps you to chat with your team members; communicate using group & 1 on 1 audio/video calls and share your screen; Share instant messages, files or any other content you like; Create, assign, set deadlines and discuss tasks directly in Chanty; Integrate messaging with a variety of apps such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Trello, GitHub, Zapier, Jira, Asana and many others; Track team workflow by using Kanban Board; Watch YouTube videos, GIFs and social media content; Have quick access to all your chats, tasks and files through Teambook. Chanty has both web and mobile versions.
Chanty, like Flock, is quite Slack-like in design, but it has positioned itself as a simpler, cheaper competitor. In terms of UI, Chanty is somewhat more polished than Flock, and it provides task management features that Slack does not; in this way, it blends some of the best features of both slack and Trello. In addition, its pricing structure is great for organizations that are more budget conscious.
24. Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger is a compact team communication tool with amazing security and feature implementation facilitating safe and secured business data sharing. It offers a collaborative work forum for business needs. Troop Messenger for business is the sure shot tonic for business assisting you in reducing the time used up for manual data circulation and teamwork. Troop Messenger, the business chat application is one among all group chat apps which comes with unlimited group creation. It is not just an instant messaging for business but also lets you share files of diverse formats along with current location and contacts. With its recent version, Troop Messenger is good to go for team collaboration across corporates and will be updated with many more professional features which are on the drawing table. Troop Messenger’s main value proposition is in its ability to seamlessly connect teams across different organizations.
25. Discord
Discord is your place to talk. Create a home for your communities and friends, where you can stay close and have fun over text, voice, and video. Whether your part of a school club, a gaming group, a worldwide art community, or just a handful of friends that want to spend time, Discord makes it easy to talk every day and hang out more often.
Discord’s main unique user feature is its “always-on” voice chat, which leads to a user experience that is great for small, tightly knit teams that want to really feel like they’re working in the same place and having live conversations. It might be overkill for teams that don’t need that kind of constant connection, but it’s a great way to create a “virtual office” if you do.
Conclusion
In conclusion, modern workplaces in 2023 have a plethora of options when it comes to team communication tools. The 25 best tools presented here represent the tip of the iceberg, giving organizations the ability to avoid communication silos and ensure effective context-based messaging. With these tools in their arsenal, teams can be confident in their ability to boost productivity and significantly reduce the time spent on unnecessary communication. These tools are quickly becoming an essential part of any modern workplace and will undoubtedly help pave the way for continued success and collaboration opportunities in the future.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a team communication tool?
A team communication tool is a software application that helps a group of people interact via a virtual medium to achieve organizational tasks and goals. A good team communication tool streamlines group conversations and makes them easier. Most of the team communication tools combine one or more of the communication channels like mail, instant messaging, video and audio conferencing, screen sharing, file sharing, and more. Clariti is a team communication tool which combines all your communication, including email, chat, calls, documents on cloud storage, and to-do in one app and links all related information in a content-rich subject chat. Clariti not only makes communication faster, but it also eliminates the need to search for any information and the stress that comes with it.
What are the 5 different types of communication tools?
The five different types of communication tools are
1. Email communication tool
2. Chat communication tool
3. Online meeting communication tool
4. Screen sharing communication tool
5. To-do communication tool
Clariti is one of the best communication tools which combines all your communication including email, chat, calls, documents on cloud storage, and to-do, in one app and links all related information in a content-rich subject chat. Clariti not only makes communication faster, but it also eliminates the need to search for any information and the stress that comes with it.
What are communication tools in the workplace?
Communication tools in the workplace let employees communicate with one another using emails, instant messaging, voice calling, and exchange files whether they sit next to each other or across the world. Clariti is one of the best communication tools for the workplace, which combines all your communication, including email, chat, calls, documents on cloud storage, and to-do in one app and links all related information in a content-rich subject chat. Clariti not only makes communication faster, but it also eliminates the need to search for any information and the stress that comes with it.
What tools are best for team interaction?
For easy team interaction you need a unified communication tool like Clariti that can combine all your communication including emails, chats, calls, documents in cloud storage, and to-dos in one app and arrange them based on topic or context. So, whenever you or your team want to refer to any conversation or file, you should be able to retrieve it in a few seconds.
What communication tools are most effective?
Emails, direct chats, group chats and voice calling are some of the communication tools that are needed for effective communication. Clariti’s content-rich subject chats are revolutionizing the way workplace communication takes place. Their innovative platform offers a unified space for conversations that avoid communication silos, allowing employees to be informed of the entire context when sending messages. This makes for more productive working relationships and helps to avoid misunderstandings due to lack of timely context. Every message sent is packed with information such as topic, project, user, customer and more so everyone can stay on the same page without having to read through long threads of emails or rummage through different systems. This kind of technology greatly enhances collaboration in the workplace by enabling easy access to essential information without all the clutter.
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