Microsoft Teams vs Slack vs Zoom vs Skype – we discuss what we are using and why and which is right for your business.

For us, Communications is fundamental to the day to day running of our companies.  We have people in different teams, different projects, different locations and different companies.  They all need to be able to talk.  For one of our IT team to talk to a WordPress developer or a marketer to be able to talk to a designer or a team to be able to get together to talk about what we are trying to achieve.

Requirements for a Small Business Communications stack

Small Business Communications have a varied number of requirements:

• Instant messaging – quick question and answer type messages.  Where is the latest image for the Vanderlay Industries Websites?
• Written Communication meant to be referred back to – Systems and procedures – The process for onboarding a new customer.
• Visual Communication – having a meeting and seeing people face to face – Our daily huddle – a 20 minute meeting where the the team plan the day.
• Screen Share – showing the team progress made with a project –  Sharing the latest mockups of a new application.
• Customer meetings – Bringing together the team to be able to discuss with the customer – Sales training can be conducted with a person selling and a new sales person listening in.
• Recording meetings – recording training sessions or customer meetings (this is a game changer productivity hack!) – Recording a customer call for team training makes a huge difference and makes onboarding customer support or sales people a lot easier.

None of the products does all of these things well, so it is often the need to combine comms applications.

Have a listen to the podcast and see which we are using, and which should work in your business – Microsoft Teams vs Slack vs Skype vs Zoom.