Here are 15 of the best external and internal communication tools to connect with your clients and team.
“Slack me.”
“Skype me.”
“Let’s do a Zoom.”
“Am I showing my screen?”
“You’re on mute.”
“This meeting could have been an email.”
These are just some of the sayings you hear around the office on a daily basis, particularly thanks to COVID. In today’s hybrid work environment, we can’t seem to stop communicating about how we’re communicating!
The undeniable need for effective and efficient communication has everyone asking themselves lots of questions (and it’s not always easy to find a good answer):
What’s the best way to communicate with your colleagues?
How do you respectfully communicate boundaries with clients?
How do you have effective communication in a virtual environment?
So it’s important—especially as a freelancer or business owner—that you have open and clear communication with your clients and team members. One way to up your communication game is by choosing the right tools. Here are the top 15 external and internal communication tools to make your life a bit easier and more productive:
Text & Video Calling Communication Tools in the Workplace
No matter where you work, there’s always background noise. At home, it could be your dog barking or kids entering the room asking for a snack. At an office or coworking space, it could be colleagues chatting about their weekend or the weather. Whatever the noise may be, you need quiet surroundings during important calls with clients. Krisp, a video conferencing system, is perfect for such loud instances. The AI-powered app removes background noise and echo, ensuring only human voices get through.
No need to have separate software for internal communication and task management. You can cut down your software tool bills by installing Jive, an intranet platform that connects employees and clients, ensures content and project collaboration and management, analyzes the way you communicate and collaborate, and much more.
You can use Slack for free, making it a great tool for small businesses. Create separate workspaces for team collaboration and client communication. You can easily make quick audio or video calls or use the instant message feature. Plus, Slack has cute gifs so you can send a colleague a fun video for their birthday, for example!
Since the pandemic, everyone has used Zoom at least once—whether for work or a virtual baby shower. Nonetheless, Zoom has proven to be a great communication software. Meet with clients, host webinars and present pitch decks with Zoom’s many features.
Although OfficeVibe isn’t exactly an internal messaging or video conferencing software, it’s still a form of communication among employees. It’s basically a digital suggestion box, providing a way to find out what your teams want, need and how to keep them engaged.
What started out as an instant messaging platform has evolved into one of the top business communication tools. In fact, Skype has become so big, it’s become a verb (aka “Skype me”). With this tool, you can hold conference calls, video calls, international calls and more.
When you see the word Fuze you may automatically think of the iced tea drink, but there is also a communication tool with the same name. You can fuze your team together through voice, video, chat, contact center and additional API solutions.
Task Management Marketing Communication Tools
With coworking spaces and hybrid work environments on the rise, task management marketing communication tools have become the place to be—especially Asana. This tool is free to use, so it’s perfect for budget-friendly freelancers. You can organize nearly anything into lists, calendars or timelines. Plus, you can invite your clients in and assign review tasks to them.
Do you love making lists? Are there Post-it notes sitting all over your VIDA desk? If so, Trello is basically a virtual list creator. Develop lists, boards and cards, manage tasks and collaborate with internal and external team members to finish your client’s project by its due date.
Although less known than Asana and Trello, ProofHub is still a great project management tool. ProofHub makes it simple to assign tasks to independent contractors or fellow employees, move tasks through various stages, easily adjust due dates and timelines, create custom workflows, proof documents and designs, discuss projects, organize your team and more.
Not only is Paymo great for task and project management, it can also assist in tracking work time, invoicing clients, scheduling, creating project estimates, expense tracking and online payment integrations. Paymo can help you keep track of client projects and payments, as well as independent contractor work and invoices.
File Communication & Collaboration Tools
Similar to DropBox, Google Drive is a great collaboration tool that allows you to securely store, share and download files with your team and clients. Plus, Google Drive can be accessed on mobile devices so you can view anything your client uploads in real-time from anywhere, ensuring you don’t miss a single edit or project.
What if you could create and share files in the same place? Bit.ai allows you to do just that. Easily collaborate with clients and coworkers in real-time, search and use templates and info from the content library, add inline comments, track document links, protect files with passwords, divide your workspace and upload to the cloud.
Not only do you need to message, call and video chat with your team and clients, but you also need to share files. DropBox is particularly helpful for larger files too big to email or text. Simply drop documents, pictures, PDFs, videos and more into a shared folder so your team can provide feedback, approvals and reviews. Have clients add imagery and documents to a separate folder for optimal collaboration.
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