Communicating and coordinating with internal teams
Freshworks Academy has a community of pretty awesome people from multiple spheres of work. This shows in the varied points of view our members bring to light in discussions. We have a fortnightly discussion called a Coffee Chat about a predefined topic. This one deals with communicating and coordinating with internal teams.
One of the most integral things you need to nail down in a company is how you can contact other teams and work with them. The best outcome for a company’s service or product almost always involves multiple teams collaborating to create something new or improve existing things. We decided to go ahead and ask our community how they go about communicating with their other teams.
What are the challenges faced in coordinating and communicating with internal teams?
According to our members, figuring out a time for meetings can be hard, especially if the notice provided is inadequate. Not understanding the steps towards achieving a shared goal or being clear about who is doing what in a project can also lead to conflict. There is also the possibility of duplication of labor when there are many teams.
Here are some things which you can keep in mind to make these challenges easier to surmount, and less troublesome when they crop up.
- Consider the other person’s schedule when you are planning meetings or assigning tasks.
- Inform all relevant people about a ticket which is being escalated. Try using the chat feature to resolve the issues, without leaving a convoluted trail on the ticket.
- Discuss and come to an understanding with the other teams as to the steps which need to be taken to achieve the goal. It helps to have a roadmap in place.
- Don’t needlessly complicate things- if you can solve something by just walking up to the person instead of sending an email, pick the former option.
- Ensure that role responsibilities, deadlines, and other essential information is clearly assigned and documented so that everyone knows what they need to do.
Do you have any guidelines and processes for internal communication? How did you implement them?
Often, having a procedure in place to follow, or guidelines that are instructive and detailed, can help make communicating internally easier and smoother. For example, having solid and comprehensive documentation which mentions timelines and ownership transparently, will make everyone’s life easier. Here are a few of the best practices our members recommend:
- Consider having formal guidelines for not only internal communications, but also for escalating tickets or issues.
- Keep communication regarding a topic to the same mail thread, thereby making looking up related emails easier.
- Try and have minutes for every meeting, which you can share with relevant people even if they couldn’t attend the meeting.
- Once you have your guidelines in place, you can share them with the team(s) in an email, and add it to your knowledge base.
- You can have all teams adopt a standardized practice like a responsibility assignment matrix (RACI chart). Even if it keeps changing, it would help other teams know exactly who owns what.
Why do/don’t you think it’s important for support teams to have good communication with other internal teams?
Everyone did indeed agree that it was important for support to communicate well with other teams. Knowledge is key, and when that is distributed unevenly, it’s possible that important steps can be missed in common tasks or goals. Another reason it is essential is because support is at the front of your service/product, facing customers. They can provide valuable insights to your other teams and also need full context of the product. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Make sure everyone has the relevant knowledge, are clear on their goals, and know what path they must take in order to achieve them.
- Your support needs to work in tandem with other teams to ensure they have full context of your product/service.
- Data from your support team can prove invaluable to other teams. They can improve your product or service even more using the tickets you get, and fix bugs as well.
- Consider having a newsletter or weekly email to pass information between your internal teams. Stay up to date with new campaigns and ideas across the organization.
What steps do you take to make sure that your management understands the value of support?
Support teams can often be pushed to the side, especially if there isn’t enough awareness about the work they put into ensuring your customers are happy. You need to make sure that they get the recognition for being the support heroes they are, as well as any help which they might need to keep doing their jobs. Here’s what our community recommends:
- When your support team needs help with an issue, back up your points with data so that the magnitude of the issue is obvious. Emphasize and explain why something has to be done, using this data.
- Credit your support team when they put in the effort to solve a problem and use the trends garnered from tickets to improve your product and fix bugs.
- If you’re a part of support, keep mentioning why you, as support, are valuable– point out the things you do. Stories of stellar customer support can also help with recognition from the management.
How important is relevant feedback? How do you give/receive it?
Feedback is one of the best ways to help someone to improve. However, if done wrong, it could be ineffective or even offensive. Engaging in excessive harshness or praise can make the feedback seem biased. Make sure that you also point out what they need to change and how to do it. When receiving feedback, keep an open mind and again, understand what you’re doing correctly and what you will have to work on fixing. Here are some things you need to keep in mind.
- Point out the things done right or wrong, fixes if any, and areas where improvement is possible. Your feedback should be actionable, and ensure you do not make it personal.
- In the case of a blunder, explain the rectification with an example. You can also add a link to relevant documentation, so that agents don’t waste time looking for the correct situation or use the wrong one.
- Ensure that feedback is given regularly, and that an assessment is also done to make sure that the employee is improving based on it. Employee to manager feedback is also important.
How do you keep everyone motivated and engaged- both in the case of wins and fails?
When it comes to a team, everyone holds responsibility for both the failures and the successes. Thus, it’s important to keep every person motivated and informed. Hold meetings together to look at what you may have done correctly or incorrectly. You can also enjoy team-bonding activities to ensure that everyone feels like they’re a part of a bigger picture, together. Below are some things to remember.
- Share your wins with the team(s) to keep spirits high and to promote unity. Analyze your fails (without being too harsh) and figure out where you went wrong, as well as the right thing to do next time.
- Tie your wins and fails back to the big picture and consider them to be a stepping stone to your ultimate goal.
- Periodically circle back to see improvements or to see what needs to be rectified. Talk amongst your team about where you went wrong and how you can do better.
- Let your team members vent, and help them feel valued by pointing out how they may have succeeded despite the pressure they were facing.
To wrap up, we’ve established that working together with your other internal teams has a wide variety of benefits. Not doing so can also have serious consequences on your projects as well. Thus, you need to make sure that you keep everyone involved in a project in the loop, as well as celebrate your wins together. A machine works well when all of the parts move smoothy and in sync, and this holds good for companies as well.
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