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Individual chat or group chat – when should you use what?

Individual chat or group chat – when should you use what?

Individual or group chat

When should I use an individual or group chat and when should I aim for a personal exchange within my team?
Reading time: 3 minutes

Find out:

  • When it is useful to have a group chat
  • What does not belong in a group chat

Quick agreements, short questions or the exchange of information – for such things an individual or team chat is suitable. Depending on which individual colleague or which group of colleagues the current topic affects.  

If you would like to motivate your employees, reassure them, praise them or even criticize them, plan a campaign or your summer party together with them or collect ideas for the upcoming season, then organize this in joint team meetings or workshops . The right and, above all, consistent team spirit is essential for your mutual success. 

If conflicts arise within the team, they of course have no place in any internal team chat – especially not in a group chat where others are forced to become involuntary spectators.  

However, if a customer calls and wants to speak to a colleague which is currently on her lunch break, you no longer need to write down a phone number, neither does the colleague have to look for it if you only remember the customer’s name. Simply share the customer’s contact in the chat and ask your colleague to call back. In this way, your colleague can easily access the customer data with just one click without having to search for long and you don’t have to keep thinking about having a reminder for your colleague. Paper is patient, but it also gets lost quickly. If this return call only affects the individual colleague, don’t bother the others in the team at all, but use a one-on-one chat. 

Both chat options – individual or group chat – have advantages and disadvantages in teamwork. Decide for yourself which option suits you better depending on the situation. Together with the personal exchange – also depending on the respective situation – you will achieve more productivity and inspire your customers with speed, all-round service and an unforgettable shopping experience.  

Would you like to know more about our integrated team chat, which is also data protection compliant according to the GDPR? Feel free to contact us directly at hallo@mpocket.io or visit our website www.mpocket.io. We look forward to hearing from you. 

*For reasons of better legibility only the simultaneous use of male and female language forms is not used. All personal names apply to both genders.

Jasmin Janson

Marketing & Communication Manager mPocket

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Why local retailers need a teamchat

Why local retailers need a teamchat

Teamchat

Why do I need an internal team chat in local retail?
Reading time: 3 minutes

We still tend to think of competent teamwork as a face-to-face thing. Especially in brick-and-mortar retail it is important, where the interpersonal relationship with your customer is one of the most crucial characteristics for inspiring and retaining your customer, isn’t it?

So, does this mean that using a digital tool for communication within my sales team – an internal team chat – will make collaboration difficult or even impossible?

On the contrary! Virtual collaboration at work, as many people had to practice every day during the pandemic, can also prove to be much more productive in local retail than if you as a team “only” stand side by side in the store, shouting each other something or writing paper notes to colleagues.

Imagine being able to reach all your salesclerks through an internal, secure chat. With all the features that private chats also offer and even more:

  • Real-time communication
  • 1:1 chat
  • Group chats, so that not each individual employee have to be informed individually
  • Chats for selected employees only
  • Public team channels
  • Smileys and GIFs for expressive communication
  • Sending images, files and texts
  • Assign customers or tasks from a chat directly
  • Elimination of potentially inefficient team meetings

Access is possible via the internet at any time and no information is lost when individual colleagues are out of the office, in a customer consultation or in another branch office or sales area in the shop. Despite a physical distance, a group chat strengthens the feeling of “togetherness”. You save your paperwork, which not only causes paper waste, but above all chaos in your daily work. Customer orders, changes in working hours or handovers are no longer lost.

Everyone involved in the chat has access to the same internal information – regardless of location and time. The advantages here are obvious:

  • Increase in productivity through an improved workflow
  • Faster decisions through a simple two-way communication
  • Team members get more involved and share status updates
  • Collaboration becomes more efficient because everyone can keep an overview
  • Bring your team together in real time and increase productivity – for you and your customers.

Would you like to know more about our integrated team chat, which is also data protection compliant according to the GDPR ? Feel free to contact us directly at hallo@mpocket.io or visit our website www.mpocket.io. We look forward to hearing from you.

*For reasons of better legibility only the simultaneous use of male and female language forms is not used. All personal names apply to both genders.

Jasmin Janson

Marketing & Communication Manager mPocket

Stay up to date!

Masters of Moment – The golden rule for productivity

Masters of Moment – The golden rule for productivity

Masters of Moment

What's the golden rule for ensuring productivity - could it be that CS professionals should optimize for efficiency, not the volume of tasks?
Reading time: 2 minutes

If I had to stick to one rule and name it as the golden one, it would be simplicity. But as for many aspects in life in general there is not that one and only recipe that covers all. To achieve the best productivity, you need to define a strategical goal, split it into objectives and link them to the objectives respectively point out their values for your overhead goals. Based on that you can categorize and therefore prioritize the single tasks. Flexibility and adaptability are in fast moving times an absolute requirement. Therefore: keep it simple. The right digital tool will help you keeping the overview of your tasks for you and your team, to divide them into categories and prioritize them. Nothing will be forgotten, done twice or untraceable. You will stand a better chance at getting things done in the day. You might then have the opportunity to go home and relax, instead of taking your work home with you, or worrying about anything that has been left unfinished. Bring your team of customer service professionals to the next level of productivity so they can focus on what matters the most: your customers.” Markus Demirci, founder and CEO of mPocket.

Learn more about productivity within your team and how digitization and automation level it up.
In case you missed the yesterday’s live talk between Markus and Alan from Freshworks “How to prioritize tasks and improve productivity?” click here or check our blogposts about the relation between attention and productivity, how setting priorities and personal strengths can improve productivity and how managers can support their teams in being productive

Like what you’re reading? Sign up to our newsletter and be the first to hear about the latest on news about automation and digitization in customer service, retail and gastronomy. If you want to know more about automating your customer service or to get your sales team to a higher level of productivity, check our website contact us directly at hallo@mpocket.io.

*For reasons of better legibility only the simultaneous use of male and female language forms is not used. All personal names apply to both genders.

Jasmin Janson

Marketing & Communication Manager mPocket

Stay up to date!

Masters of Moment – The golden rule for productivity

Masters of Moment – Management support in productivity

Masters of Moment

How can a manager aid and abet productivity? Can they help with role prioritization?
Reading time: 4 minutes

Where the shortage of skilled workers – your customer service professionals – and the demanding customer meet each other, the cohesion and the smooth interaction of individual team members plays a dominant role.

As business manager or owner, it’s up to you to decide how to best utilize the resources you have available. Good resource management can enable a business to excel in its domain. Some of the benefits of managing resources efficiently include: Lesser workplace conflicts lower overhead costs, better profits, improved quality in products and services and greater productivity.

How can you as the manager support the productivity of each team member, the team as a whole, ensure long-term success and the mental well-being of each individual as well as master team spirit? What steps can you take to help your customer service professionals to manage their workloads?

  • Use clear classifications: Applying clear classifications to certain tasks makes it easier for employees to decide which ones to address immediately and which ones to delay, while other objectives take priority. How you classify does not matter (colors, numbers etc.), but a digital solution will help you introduce a clear system which will make it easier for people to manage their workload and feel confident they’re focusing their energies where they’re most needed.
  • Link tasks to their value: Allocating tasks a certain value, based on the benefit the business will gain from them being completed will help finishing them as quickly as possible compared to tasks which have a lower immediate value. For example, collecting more reviews for your business will increase your visibility online, increase customer traffic and therefore your turnover.
  • Train for flexibility: As fast as life in general changes, business changes. New targets and customer expectations emerge all the time and something that was a major priority yesterday might not be so urgent today. Flexibility and adaptability are extremely valuable characteristics that allow your team members to shift focus between different tasks when they need to. The requirement is that they are trained to know when one task takes precedence over another.
  • Eliminate distractions: You as a manager need to act as a shield for distractions, so your team can focus on completing urgent or important tasks. Proven as effective is to structure your team in a way that minimizes distractions for certain individuals. By assigning certain tasks to individuals of your team, those can focus on exactly those tasks.
  • Have regular feedbacks: Employees who are left to manage and complete heavy workloads on their own can soon feel left alone, unsupported and in the worst case highly stressed. Arrange regular feedbacks with team single members or within the team to discuss how they’re getting on with their work, if they have any questions and if there’s anything you can do to help them. Already the fact that there is an opportunity to talk makes your employees feel reassured and comfortable
  • Be realistic: Placing too much stress or too high expectations on your employees is counterproductive. Stay fair and realistic about what they can achieve in a given timeframe. Sometimes you simply have to accept that there are situations when certain tasks have to be abandoned or postponed.

Especially in these times when good employees are hard to find it is even more important to support and reassure them in order to avoid any fluctuation. The management of priorities is essential to reach your objectives and guarantee the success of a project or your business. As a manager, your sole responsibility should be helping your team work efficiently to manage the heavy workload the todays’ customer service comes with. You have to be flexible, adaptable, reasonable and communicate. Delegating is by far not enough. You need to develop a tracking system to evaluate how well the work is being conducted. Digitalization can help you even with only 2 team members to track, assign and evaluate your daily, weekly and monthly tasks. With the right system you can also asses or reassess certain roles within your team by analyzing single workloads, scope of tasks or meeting deadlines.” Markus Demirci, founder and CEO of mPocket.

Do you know already how to manage your team to get it to their highest productivity or do you want to learn more about supporting your customer service professionals in fulfilling their tasks?

Missed the live talk between Markus and Alan from Freshworks “How to prioritize tasks and improve productivity?” on 18.05.2022 6 p.m. GTM? Watch the recording.

Like what you’re reading? Sign up to our newsletter and be the first to hear about the latest on news about automation and digitization in customer service, retail and gastronomy. If you want to know more about automating your customer service or to get your sales team to a higher level of productivity, check our website contact us directly at hallo@mpocket.io.

*For reasons of better legibility only the simultaneous use of male and female language forms is not used. All personal names apply to both genders.

Jasmin Janson

Marketing & Communication Manager mPocket

Stay up to date!

Masters of Moment – The golden rule for productivity

Masters of Moment – How to prioritize tasks

Masters of Moment

How can customer service professionals prioritize tasks? Can they lean on personal strengths?
Reading time: 4 minutes

The experience your potential customers make when first interacting with you, your brand, your shop or any of your customer service professionals decides not only if they will make the purchase, but also determines if they become long term customer and recommend you to others. To deliver an outstanding customer experience you need to deliver a high-quality product and service timely and solve problems quickly and accurately. But above all you need to put the customer at the center of all interactions to keep them coming back. Skills like empathy, active listening, communication and adaptability are just a few out of those a todays’ customer service professional must have. Without setting priorities to your daily work, these skills are not used effectively.

How can you prioritize tasks when everything is important?

During your opening hours tasks are often prioritized according to the needs of others – usually your customers – or according to deadlines. This procedure can turn out to be just busy instead of spending limited time on tasks that are actually important.

Prioritizing your tasks intentionally and according to future goals ensures that every task drives value and unimportant tasks are not overflooding your to-dos.

Thoughtful prioritization usually contains an evaluation of your tasks and allocating the time and effort to bring the most value in a short amount of time. It should be flexible, as you may need to interrupt low-priority tasks for urgent must-dos.

Strategies for prioritizing your tasks to keep your customers happy and to let your customer service professionals work as efficient as possible could be:

  • Have a list that contains all tasks at one place: First you need to understand the full scope of what needs to get done, even the easiest tasks should be considered. In the next step you can prioritize them according to the importance, urgency, length, and reward of each task. Having such a list in digital form which all of your team members can access anytime from anywhere will increase the overall overview and productivity.
  • Understand and identify your goals: While prioritization might appear at first sight like a time management measurement, it is in fact key for achieving long-term goals. Seeing the big picture and understanding in your team what you are really working towards will help you prioritize tasks.
  • Highlight urgency and prioritize based on importance: Full visibility of deadlines, even when they are not formally required, helps you identify urgent tasks and reduce procrastination. Additional categorizing of your tasks by importance helps you identify the must-dos.
  • Avoid distractions: Keep intentionally away from competing tasks, especially when their difficulty increases.
  • Consider effort: When your task list is becoming too long, prioritize according to effort, delegate to your team members and push through those easier tasks more quickly.

It’s important to be realistic in setting goals for you and your team and in prioritizing tasks. Otherwise, you’ll create false expectations first for yourself and also for your whole team. You will all constantly feel as if you’re falling behind and like you can never reach your goals.
The purpose of prioritization is to spend time working on the important tasks. Important tasks are those that will make a difference in the long run and bring you and your team in the right direction. You as a team will feel much more focused and intentional and the busyness you experienced until now will turn into productivity. You will actually complete your work and see some true progress. Digitalization and automation serve as your assistant when it comes to listing tasks, prioritizing them, setting and reminding of deadlines and analyzing progress and reevaluating these tasks again. Personal strengths of every singles person in your team must of course be considered as well in the whole equation. One might be better and therefore faster in a more difficult task, but others are more familiar with repetitive ones. There you need to consider each one’s effort.” Markus Demirci, founder and CEO of mPocket.

Do you want to learn more about prioritizing tasks in your daily work to achieve your weekly, monthly and yearly goals easier? Do you know already how much impact digitalization and automation can have even on simple, repeating tasks?

Join the Livetalk between Markus and Alan from Freshworks “How to prioritize tasks and improve productivity?” on 18.05.2022 6 p.m.

Like what you’re reading? Sign up to our newsletter and be the first to hear about the latest on news about automation and digitization in customer service, retail and gastronomy. If you want to know more about automating your customer service or to get your sales team to a higher level of productivity, check our website contact us directly at hallo@mpocket.io.

*For reasons of better legibility only the simultaneous use of male and female language forms is not used. All personal names apply to both genders.

Jasmin Janson

Marketing & Communication Manager mPocket

Stay up to date!

Masters of Moment – The golden rule for productivity

Masters of Moment – the relation of attention and productivity

Masters of Moment

What does attention have to do with productivity?
Reading time: 3 minutes

Are you, as a well-trained professional, struggling with the huge number of tasks modern customer service requests? Do you have the feeling not to get things done although you are busy the whole day?

Your first and logical assumption is most probably that you and your team lack the necessary time management to work efficiently and fulfill today’s customers’ demands to a satisfactory level.

Let us tell you something: productivity has in fact very little to do with time. To improve productivity, you should focus on attention first, not on time. Although both are of course interrelated.

How do I manage my attention in customer service when there are several customers at different touchpoints – online and offline, digital and in-store – trying to pull exactly that attention simultaneously?

For years in exactly the same situation like you are still today, Markus, the founder and CEO of mPocket, was asking himself precisely this question day by day. The answer is attention management. Attention management is the practice of controlling distractions, being present in the moment, finding flow, and maximizing concentration. It is the art of focusing on getting things done for the right reasons, in the right places and at the right moments.

In customer service that means: to realize all your customers’ requests to not only fulfil to their satisfaction, but even exceed their expectations where THEY are at THAT moment they ask.

Neither can you control how many customers contact you in a certain time frame, nor can you control how they contact you with which requests. How can you filter and prioritize what you are paying your attention to?

The answer lies in being intentional instead of reactive. In customer service automation is the key. Here we actually benefit from the changed customer behavior and need to make as much use of it as possible. Both sides gain from automated processes: A seamless, convenient, eventful and fast shopping experience for the customer on one hand and an optimization of the work flow for the customer service specialists on the other. You and your team can focus on your most relevant task: understanding your customers’ needs and serving them the best and most human way possible instead of being distracted by other tasks. It already starts with collecting customer data. The time-consuming maintenance of a customer database is obsolete for you and your teammates. Product reservations, reminders about contract extensions or review requests can be sent automatically at the right time. Any concern of losing the personal relationship between customer service specialists and customers or irritating the customer is unsubstantiated. By implementing automation to the personal sales style of your company or by individualization to each customer, the feeling of exclusivity will be strengthened even more. Automation provides you the necessary time to fully pay attention to your customer service. To control your customer service, control what you pay attention to.Markus Demirci, founder and CEO of mPocket.

Are you curious to learn how attention management works? How you can prioritize people, projects and single tasks that matter?

Join the Livetalk between Markus and Alan from FreshworksHow to prioritize tasks and improve productivity?” on 18.05.2022 6 p.m.

Like what you’re reading? Sign up to our newsletter and be the first to hear about the latest on news about automation and digitization in customer service, retail and gastronomy. If you want to know more about automating your customer service or to get your sales team to a higher level of productivity, check our website contact us directly at hallo@mpocket.io.

*For reasons of better legibility only the simultaneous use of male and female language forms is not used. All personal names apply to both genders.

Jasmin Janson

Marketing & Communication Manager mPocket

Stay up to date!