How Best to Communicate

One of the things that Lizzy prides herself on, is the ability to help streamline and manage the communication gap between employees.  In a normal business, employees are all the time having to stop what they’re doing to ask someone else a question, or to answer other employee’s questions.  How many times have you gotten up, walked down the hall to ask someone something, only to find that they were in a meeting or on the phone.  

In this blog entry I’m going to be discussing some of the ways Lizzy can help out when communicating internally with fellow workers.

One of the first things that you have to do, if you’re going to run a successful business, is to set down rules for everyone to follow.  Included in these rules should be a list of steps to follow when communicating internally.  I mean, we can’t have people just walking all around in circles interrupting everyone else and causing so much noise that no one can work.  We need procedures that can be easily followed that gets them the information they need, but with minimal interruption to everyone else.  Lets see how Lizzy might be able to help out here.

Some Assumptions:

First we need to assume that you’re using Lizzy to her full potential, which includes employees clocking in via the time clock feature as well as using the dashboard to schedule events, meetings and so forth.  We also need to be using specific modules within the system, and for this discussion we’ll assume we’re running a call center.

The Path To Good Communication:

The first step to good communication skills is to realize that everyone else has a job to perform as well.  While it may help you get your job done faster if you jump up and go ask someone a question, it might not be the best overall practice.  Lets assume we’re logged into Lizzy and are using the CRM system to track our calls and open and work on Tickets for customers.  The first most important report in the system is found under the Reports menu called “In Process”.  This report will show you very quickly what everyone in the company is currently working on.  It will also display Calendar events if any happen to be scheduled during the moment that you run the report.

So with a single click I can see if a person is on the phone, in a meeting, or on vacation.  This simple step saves me from getting up and wasting my time as well as theirs.  So lets say that after we run the report we see that the person we’re after is shown as being Clocked In, meaning they are working, but not displayed anywhere else. This tells us they are at the office but aren’t logging calls, or working on Tickets or in meetings, so we’re safe to try to talk to them. We have a few choices as to how to proceed however:

1) We can search the Knowledgebase for our information if it’s something that might have been logged there.  This would be things like procedures to follow for computer problems, or specific processes involved in performing data entry.  Key elements that are continuously asked of people should be logged in the Knowledgebase and referenced to save everyone time.

2) Quick questions should be sent through the completely encrypted Communications tab directly to the person with the answers.  This allows them to answer the question when they get a moment and Lizzy will continue to remind them until they do.  She’ll also let you know when they reply.

3) Need a meeting?  Schedule it on the persons calendar by adding a new event.  Schedule a reminder for them 15 minutes before hand and not only will Lizzy remind them of the meeting, but she’ll also alert them immediately,  that you added the event to begin with.

Now instead of haphazardly getting up and disturbing all those around you, you suddenly and instantly can begin letting Lizzy schedule communications and keep track of them in an organized fashion.

Of course, you can always get up and go bother them anyway, but at least now you know they’re not on the phone or in a meeting.

–glenn hancock