You’ve invested thousands of dollars and you’ve spent many weeks collaborating with your Digital Transformation development team to deploy an innovative, user-friendly business messaging app. Now, it’s finally time to roll out this new technology. Cue the crickets.
This is the point where many development projects fall flat, resulting in a poor ROI and a project that is ultimately deemed a failure. In fact, if this has been your experience, know that you’re not alone. As many as 7 in 10 Digital Transformation projects are ultimately viewed as a failure. But fortunately, this is one failure that can be turned around because it’s never too late to re-deploy your business messaging app.
Business Messaging App Deployment Challenges
The primary problem surrounding enterprise messaging app deployment surrounds user adoption. If you don’t select a business messaging platform, your employees are going to take it upon themselves to choose one. This results in a situation where you have HR using one app, while sales uses another messaging platform and workers out in the field utilize yet another messaging solution such as SMS texting. The use of multiple, disparate messaging apps within a single organization will hamper communication, leading to silos that stand in the way of effective collaboration and communication.
User adoption represents a significant challenge when you’re trying to deploy a new enterprise messaging app. By nature, we’re resistant to change and this reluctance makes it difficult to deploy new technology. It’s a bit like jumping ship when your existing ship is still sea-worthy. The jumping process is uncomfortable and as you’re making the jump, there’s a momentary element of danger that only contributes to one’s reluctance. To promote user adoption, consider the following tips.
Explain Why You’re Deploying a New Business Messaging Platform
Users are going to be far more likely to adopt new technology if they’re well-informed about the reasons for the change. The use of disparate messaging systems within a single organization stands in the way of collaboration, preventing effective communication. By using a single messaging platform across the organization, you effectively remove the silos that inhibit information sharing.
There may also be serious adverse consequences for using consumer-grade messaging apps. Regulatory compliance is a major consideration because many messaging apps like WhatsApp, iMessage and Signal lack appropriate data retention and export capabilities, leading to recordkeeping violations. A real life example of a regulatory compliance-related consequence can be found in the case of almost a dozen major banks.
The Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently handed down nearly $2 billion dollars in fines. It has been reported that these financial institutions permitted the use of consumer-grade messaging apps, which were used for client communications. The data from these chats were not properly retained, leading to recordkeeping violations and hefty fines. Consumer-grade messaging apps are also associated with data ownership challenges, amongst other issues. Suffice to say that user adoption rates increase dramatically when an employee realizes that their use of certain messaging apps could quite literally come at the cost of millions of dollars in fines.
Perform Pre-Deployment User Training on Your New Business Messaging App
User adoption rates tend to falter when users lack familiarity with the new business messaging app platform. This underscores the importance of providing comprehensive user training well in advance of the messaging app deployment. Training also ensures that users have the ability to use all of the texting app’s features and functionalities in a way that increases ROI, especially in the long term.
The best text messaging app deployment strategies include “super users” as part of the training process. Super users are department leaders and others who work in a leadership role. These individuals receive intensive training relatively early in the pre-deployment process, becoming in-house “experts” of sorts. Super users can then provide support to colleagues during the training process and during the actual roll-out.
Plan the Business Messaging App Deployment and Share That Plan With Employees
In the world of Digital Transformation, the deployment phase is known to be amongst the most stressful, leading to a decreased user adoption rate, reduced ROI and even poor employee morale. For this reason, it’s important to plan ahead, developing a deployment plan for your new business messaging app that will align well with your company’s needs.
Deployment strategies can take many forms, including the following.
• Deploy All at Once – With this approach, you deploy the messaging app company-wide, with everyone using the new texting platform from this point forward. With the right training, this deployment strategy can be very effective. Without suitable training, this strategy can be disastrous. It’s a bit like jumping onto a new ship only to find that there are massive holes in the hull — holes that were not visible when you were topside — and the ship is actually in the process of sinking.
• Phased Deployment – With a phased deployment, the business messaging app is rolled out department by department, or office by office. The advantage of this texting app deployment strategy is that you can identify any challenges and take measures to address those challenges so that subsequent deployments are not affected.
• Parallel Deployment – In the case of a parallel deployment, you have a period where you allow employees to utilize the new messaging app alongside the messaging platform that they were using previously. This way, users have a fallback if they encounter challenges with the new platform and they’re free to explore it on their own terms. The drawback is that users may be reluctant to make the switch to the new platform, so it’s important that you make it clear that the old messaging platform will be retired at a certain point in time.
7T’s business messaging app, SayHey Messenger® is now available in two deployments. An organization can choose between a web app and mobile app for iOS and Android. This user-friendly text messaging platform can also be integrated into a company’s existing enterprise software systems.
Despite the potential challenges of deploying a new business messaging solution, instant messaging remains an key component of the corporate landscape, with instant messaging being one of the most effective tools for business communication. SayHey Messenger® includes the following features and capabilities.
- Data sovereignty for control and ownership of all messaging data;
- Fully compliant instant messaging for regulated businesses;
- Seamlessly integrates into existing company software platforms;
- Admin portal for moderation, auditing, and inclusivity;
- SayHey Spaces for company-wide broadcasts and team collaborations;
- Engaging, intuitive user interface for incredible adoption rates;
- Send compliant SMS messages to external users with full data retention; and
- Custom UI with your logo, colors and branding elements for a style that’s all yours.
SayHey Messenger® can be deployed in a matter of days too! Contact us today to learn more about SayHey Messenger® and how this business messaging app can help your organization to streamline its communications.
