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A recent coursework activity involved responding to an individual named Kai, who is finding it difficult to remember coffee prices.

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Subject: Communication Help Needed

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Hi there,

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I am reaching out because I know you have a tech mindset and I\’m sure you can figure out a tech tool to help us with our current communication.

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Right now, we have been using mostly text messages for communication among staff, but that only gets us so far. Also, it depends on whether or not someone remembers to relay information in time and if they share it with the right people.

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Is there something else we can use that would allow for more streamlined communication among all of us and include alerts to menu changes, specials, and other important information while also allowing us to communicate with one another and ask questions as needed?

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We all care about the business and want it to succeed, which is why we just need to find something to help us improve in this area.

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Let me know if you have any ideas!

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Thanks,

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Kai

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I responded to Kai with the following message:

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Subject: Communication Help Needed

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Greetings Kai,

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Thank you for considering me as a partner in exploring how to improve communication amongst your team through technology.  After conducting some research of my own, I recommend that we consider integrating Slack into your organization\’s communication rhythm.  Slack is communication application supported across both mobile and web-based platforms with the purpose of achieving more productive workplace collaboration.  The tool is compatible with both Android and Apple devices, in addition to the service being reachable via the web at https://slack.com.

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Your main issue is that the current state of communication via text-message, makes it difficult to ensure everyone receives updates about key focus areas such as menu changes, specials, and other important information.  With Slack, each focus area can be separated into “channels”.  This way, information is cascaded in a dedicated space instead of getting lost in a text message chain.  There is a feature included with Slack that allows you to send notifications to the entire team or an individual person, and these notifications work with smartphones so that delivery of communication is seamless.  Team members can also ask questions in individual channels, keeping conversations relevant to that focus area.

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I am confident that Slack would be a good fit for your organization.  Slack has been designed specifically for communication in the workplace and solves the issues you\’ve described with using text messaging communication.  When considering the size of your organization, I think an additional key benefit is that Slack is free for smaller teams.  This gives you an opportunity to try out Slack without any financial commitments, to see if it is a good fit for your team.

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Sincerely,

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Brian Baker

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I haven\’t heard back from Kai; but, I hope my suggestions helped.

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