E-MAIL AS A CHANNEL OF COMMUNICATION IS AN ENORMOUS WASTE OF TIME.
Too much spam, too much trivially and often too many emails that tend to complicate rather than simplify.
Classic e-mail communication takes too much time and effort to pass on simple information. This severely slows down communication in most companies and in contact with customers. In addition, e-mails and their attachments are often not found in the company network, they disappear or are forgotten. You wait days for feedback from a customer — whose email inbox is probably about to burst — which in the worst case can drag the current project out.
Email communication complicates the workflow and with the search for the right salutation, formulation of the concise but nevertheless understandable request and the appropriate closing formula, it often takes a lot of time to write a simple text to your business partner or customer. Whether you are in a small office with five employees or in a large company with hundreds of colleagues — you will recognize that communication is often complicated by emails. But improving corporate and customer communication is not that complicated.
WHY TICKET SYSTEMS DON´T OFFER AN ALTERNATIVE
There will be people who will suggest ticketing systems for customer service as an alternative. However, these tools are comparable to e-mail communication and are often only geared towards linear communication. This is good for a single to-do, for which there is little to consider within a project. But there is no project reference and not everyone in the team or company sees all the information — these remain only fully visible to the ticket creator, which means that transparency falls by the wayside. Since the issued ticket is usually only visible to those involved, it is difficult to hand over a ticket to another team member, even in an worst case scenario. In a nutshell — there is no insight into the entire project.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS THAT SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE
There are many tools that make your project management easier. From Monday.com, ClickUp and Basecamp to Asana and Wrike — the range is diverse and therefore confusing. You can find out which app is the right one for your company by making a direct comparison. It is important that you compare your requirements with the given functions from the start. For example, Asana is the cheaper alternative (from € 10.99 per month or in the free version with limited functions) to Monday.com (from € 39.00 per month for 5 users). Both tools have very similar functions, Asana shining with archiving, retention & automatic backup and Monday.com having requirements, attendance and content management. Regardless of which app you ultimately choose, its use will make everyday life and communication with your customers easier for you and your teammates.
OUR CHOICE: ASANA
We decided on ASANA and have been using the tool since 2016 — with success. The web and mobile application helps teams and groups to organize and manage their work — including direct feedback through comments, including documents, images and links. Asana provides companies with mechanisms that display everyday work in a structured manner, link daily tasks with corporate goals and simplify communication during a project.
Instead of sending an email to your client or chatting with the coworker, Asana creates a task. One or more people are assigned to the task and the project appears under “My tasks” for those responsible. The creator of the task is automatically added as a follower. Within this task, feedback can be given, work progress can be documented, due dates can be changed or marked as completed.
Asana gives you the option to prioritize tasks. You can tell your employees or the customer which tasks have to be done immediately and which are further down on the priority list. In the best case, your customers and your team rely less on emails and plan and communicate using the tool — whether in the office or on the go with the mobile version. Projects can be planned more effectively and the current status can easily be viewed.
MORE EFFORT LESS MAILS — OUR PROGRESS THROUGH THE USE OF ASANA
By using Asana we have been able to save a lot of time and work more effectively in recent years. We can better organize, oversee and prioritize our tasks and get direct and fast customer feedback, to which we can react quickly and effectively. In addition, all important information, photos and documents for a project are stored in one place and are visible to everyone involved. The endless sending back and forth of e-mails, forwarding of content and putting those involved in the CC has been done thanks to the tool.
It was precisely these experiences that convinced us that in today’s world, with tools like Asana, Monday.com, Basecamp and others, email communication is a waste of time and in many cases is more of a hindrance than a help. We can only recommend any company — no matter how big or small it is — get informed and switch to a project management tool.
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