How to Collaborate with Your Team and Customers while Working Remotely

Thanks

Before we start, we want to thank all of the healthcare and front-line workers who are our heroes and who are courageously taking care of us all while risking their own health during these uncertain times. Thank you all for your bravery, compassion and strength.

By staying at home we are each doing our small part helping to prevent the virus from quickly spreading. And by working from home we are doing what we can to keep the economy from grinding to a halt. And if we are resourceful, maybe we can collectively help to move forward a bit.

Now that we are all working from home, we need to stay engaged with our co-workers and our customers. There are so many great tools that can help us to do this. Just because we need keep our distance at this time, there is no need for us to slow down. It is a great time to retool and to reset by staying creative and leveraging the technologies we have at our disposal.

The first step in the engagement process is to take action and to proactively reach out. Even if it is just to say “hello”, customers, vendors and co-workers will be happy to hear from you. Conversations will inspire and initiate activity. Under normal circumstances, about 80% of SMB employee time is spent collaborating. Here are a few things to help keep your team engaged.

Telephone

Make sure your team can be reached at their usual numbers. When someone can’t be reached easily, it causes unnecessary frustration and discourages further engagement. Everyone should be reachable on their direct line or extension.

Real Time Chat

Use a chat solution to keep conversations flowing. Your team can chat privately or in groups. Use chat to communicate with your customers too. When done right, chat is a great way to communicate efficiently and immediately.

Video Conferencing

Use video conferencing with both your coworkers and your customers. Video is a great solution for internal meetings and can encourage team building while making communications more personal. Video conferencing with customers is a great way to stay connected with your customers. Make it easy for them by hosting a video call that they can easily connect to using their web browser of mobile device. Using video is an excellent way to keep us personally connected and engaged and is exactly the type of workday modification we need to make while we are all working from home.

Share and Collaborate on Documents Online in Real Time

When you simultaneously open and work a document online with a coworker or even a customer, you are co-creating something in real time. It is a great way to get work done. Working a document online with someone is true collaboration. The immediacy is creative, efficient and gives your a sense of connection.

Teams

Microsoft Teams is as great way to achieve all of the above. There are other options, but Teams allows you to efficiently collaborate with both your internal team and securely and discretely with your external customers and contacts. The Live Event feature is as great way to schedule and produce your meetings. Live events can include video, audio, screen sharing, file sharing. You can have multiple presenters. You can keep the meeting for your internal group or you can securely extend one to people outside of your organization.

Change

Our workplace collaboration has changed and will continue changing for the foreseeable future. To keep business moving, we must change our approach to teamwork and communication. We can each do our part to help and to stay productive with an eye on building growth even in the most difficult of times.