Communication Archives - NuTech Services LLC

Oct, 2022

4 Useful Video Conferencing Etiquette Tips

For the remote worker, video conferencing is an essential tool. Regardless if you are a veteran of using video conferencing or if you are a new remote worker, there are some tips that can help you be a more effective member of a remote team. Let’s go through four today.

Test Your Connection and Hardware Before You Meet

Nothing is more annoying than being in a virtual meeting only to have one of your team members constantly cutting out and dropping their connection. Not only is it annoying, but it can easily cause severe miscommunications or hold up the meeting as people are asked to repeat themselves over and over again. Taking a few brief moments to test your equipment and the stability of your connection will help make your meeting significantly more productive.

Stay on Topic

If there’s been an agenda shared for the meeting (which is something we recommend), do everything you can to stick to it. If something mentioned reminds you of something off-topic that needs to be addressed, make a note of it and follow up afterward.

The same goes if someone happens to join the meeting late. Instead of spending time circling back to bring them up to speed, make sure that someone is prepared to fill them in on what they missed afterward—if it’s something that pertains to them at all. You only have so long to meet, don’t spend that time reiterating what you’ve already covered.

Mute Yourself Unless You’re Speaking

This one is just about being polite, but even if you’re not intentionally making any noise, a live mic can pick up more than you’d expect. Clearing your throat, sneezing, background noise…all of it can distract from the topic at hand, and most of it can be pretty gross to hear if we’re being honest. Why allow the chance of interrupting the meeting when you can eliminate it by muting yourself? Your teammates would much rather have to remind you that you’re muted than listen to the potential alternative.

That being said, you’re still on video, so try and minimize visual distractions as well. If you have a coughing fit, for instance, politely cover your mouth, or even kill your video feed until the moment has passed. Your team would much rather you vanish for a moment than watch you blow your nose, trust us.

Take Notes

Whether or not someone is delegated the responsibility of taking notes during your conference, it is always a good idea to take notes for yourself, as well. This will help you keep track of whatever responsibilities were assigned to you specifically while also giving greater context to what has been discussed.

We Hope This Helps You Make the Most of Your Video Conferences

Reach out for more assistance, including a network audit to ensure that you have what you need to support successful conferencing. Give us a call at 810.230.9455 to get started!

May, 2022

Tip of the Week: Handy Shortcuts in Google Chat

Google Chat, a worthy successor to Google Hangouts, is a great tool for users that can help them be more productive throughout the day, but did you know that you might be missing out on a ton of functionality by forgoing some of these keyboard shortcuts? Let’s go over some of the most helpful ones and how you can use them to get more out of this tool.

Access a Shortcut Cheat Sheet

If there is one shortcut you walk away from this blog with, we want it to be this one. To pull up a keyboard shortcut list, all you have to do is press the ? key with no conversation selected. It will bring up a list for you to reference.

Quickly Switch Your Lines of Communication

If you want to hop around the interface without taking your hands off the keyboard, you can use this keyboard shortcut. Jump from one space or conversation to the next by pressing Ctrl + K. This will open a box, providing you with options to start a group conversation, browse or create a new space, review message requests, or start a dialogue with one of your existing contacts.

Edit a Sent Message

If you send a message a little too soon, you can make a change to it after the fact by selecting the up arrow on your message. Once the message is selected, you can make any necessary edits, then update the message.

Google Chats is a wonderful tool, so make sure you get the most out of it! NuTech Services can help you take full advantage of your technology solutions. To learn more, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

May, 2022

The 5 Essential Features to Seek from a Conferencing Platform

These days you’d be hard-pressed to find a company that is not equipped to handle video conferencing in some way. The pandemic led many organizations to adopt these platforms, and as a result, these platforms have seen a dramatic increase in functionality and capability. We’d like to discuss some of the best features that your organization can take advantage of with video conferencing solutions.

Features to Seek Out in Your Video Conferencing Platform

VoIP and Chat Functions

When it comes to conferencing, the name of the game is communication. Your conferencing platform should have as many methods of keeping up communication as possible. Some conferencing solutions have Voice over IP telephony service bundled with them, and others might include various other mediums.

Many conferencing platforms also have built-in chat functionality, creating additional opportunities for participants to engage with presenters and other attendees. By knowing which features your solution is already capable of, you can make better decisions about how to get the most out of it moving forward.

HD Video Recording

Video conferences are made much more enjoyable when you can see each other clearly and communicate effectively. It stands to reason that your conferencing platform should allow for HD video. Opting for such a solution will simply make the meeting that much more enjoyable for everyone involved, which will lead to better engagement.

Some meetings should also be recorded so that the material can be reviewed at a later date. To make sure this can happen, we recommend that your video conferencing tool accommodate unlimited recordings of meetings that can be stored in the cloud for later use.

Screen Sharing

One of the most effective things you can do during a meeting is share your screen, especially if you are presenting information to your audience. If you select a video conferencing software which allows you to share your screen, you are basically opening the floodgates to more informative and engaging presentation opportunities.

Reach Out to Us for Assistance with Selecting Your Conferencing Platform

If you’re unsure of which solution is right for your business, NuTech Services can help. To learn more, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

Jul, 2021

Considering Encryption in Light of Android Messages’ Update

With the addition of end-to-end encryption to Google’s Android Messages application, we have a perfect opportunity to discuss the concept of encryption and why it is so important. Let’s dive right in, shall we?

First, let’s go over what encryption is, as a bit of background.

What is Encryption, and How Does it Work?

If you’re looking to keep data secure as you share it or store it, encryption is one of the best means to do so.

For instance, let’s say that (for whatever reason) we wanted to share a line from Romeo and Juliet with someone, but we wanted to make sure that the someone we’re sharing it with would be the only one to get that information. By using encryption, we can take the following passage…

“But, soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”

…and turn it into this as it is sent along:

OoLCYOGthzwihU03wMa6y1xdbXhK4bM+XQCE02c2LCV6qg2mdGPG4MWgPHOQzmkfUC2jxq2/sKE9eN4E+6ByUBGukTFnxL9ShM0oqIv3HAN7m8yXBOwyMa9B6Hn2FXYw

Once this information has been encrypted, only someone with the decryption key could take this jumble and restore it to William Shakespeare’s classic piece. Think of it like using the Ovaltine decoder ring from A Christmas Story.

Obviously, this is a gross oversimplification of how encryption works. In reality, encryption is effectively an enormously complicated math problem that would take even the most powerful computer centuries to solve.

Okay, so now that we’ve established what encryption is, let’s dive into what Google has done with its Android Messages app.

Google is Adding Encryption to the Stock Message App on Android

First announced at the launch of its beta test in November of 2020, all up-to-date instances of the default Android Messages application now feature end-to-end encryption. This is certainly a welcome improvement, as SMS messages are often used to transmit sensitive information and two-factor authentication proofs.

As of right now, this encryption feature comes into play with one-on-one chats between users who have chat features enabled on their device, and is visually represented by a padlock at the top of the screen.

Encryption is a Tool That You Should Be Using

While encryption alone won’t be enough to completely protect your business’ processes as a whole, that isn’t to say that it can be skipped—quite the opposite.

NuTech Services can assist you in implementing this and various other security measures and protocols. To learn more about what we have to offer, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

May, 2021

Improving Your Business Communication for the New Remote Normal

The fact that many of their workers never see each other has led to some interesting shifts in the way that businesses approach communications. They used to just walk across the room and have a conversation, but as people try to make sense of the hybrid work environment, communications will continue to be a key. Let’s take a look at how your internal and external communications strategies will change to meet the needs of your roving workforce.

The Hybridized Has Created Certain Challenges

Your team has been using multiple modes of communication for a while. They utilize email, they send each other text messages and instant messages, they collaborate on files together, they’ve likely even spoken to each other on the phone. The one thing they haven’t been able to do since the pandemic struck in early 2020, is talk face-to-face.

You’re probably thinking that they’ve interacted face-to-face on video conference calls, but consider for a minute that a large percentage of communication is non-verbal, and we don’t mean Facebook Messenger texts, we mean from body language. That aspect has been eliminated completely, and some organizations have struggled without it.

So while communications may not be the same for every business, we can bet that if your team hasn’t seen each other in-person in months, there is probably something being missed. Here are a few solid practices that you can start to normalize communications in the new normal.

Internal Communication Practices

Lead by Example: When attempting to spur on better communications inside your business, you need to take the reins and lead by example. Not only do you need to communicate your expectations to your team, you need to be right there with them to ensure they are meeting those demands.
Personalization: Ditching the jargon-filled business productivity rants is a solid practice regardless of the situation you find your business in. Internal communications should be about collaboration and cooperation and clearing the air so there is less confusion and fewer impediments to progress.
Switch It Up: With so much in flux, it is important that you use all of your communications in a way that benefits the process it supports. For example, if you have a project team that can’t meet because it’s crewmembers aren’t in the office at the same time, make sure that there is a video conference meeting in lieu of a conference room meeting. Using all the tools at your disposal to normalize communications in your business can be a major benefit.

External Communication Practices

Keep Your Contacts Updated: Your business is making moves and it’s not a bad idea to share it with the people you depend on. Your clients appreciate being kept in the know, your vendors can use good ideas at their own business, and prospects will do more business with a company that keeps things transparent.
Empathize With Current Issues: We’ve all been dealing with major problems for more than a year, and if your business has been fortunate enough to come through it in good shape, make sure to let people know that you are ready to help in whatever way you can.
Speak Directly Whenever Possible: As long as it doesn’t hurt your business, being direct can really help move things forward. Sometimes people need to be handled carefully, but for the most part people respond to plain speaking and straight-forward messaging.

At NuTech Services, we can help your business sort through the many issues you will face by going hybrid. Give us a call to learn more at 810.230.9455.

Mar, 2021

Going Over the Basics of Collaboration Solutions

With businesses depending on technology more now than ever, it stands to reason that the collaboration solutions that are available would improve as demand increases. Today’s business needs a collaboration solution that allows them to communicate, manage tasks, and be a reliable solution for teams separated by more than just a wall. Let’s take a look at the modern collaboration tool and how they provide powerful benefits for the modern business.

What Are Collaboration Solutions?

There used to be the phone, then there was email, then instant messaging; the modern business landscape has been formed from the invention and innovation of tools that allow people to communicate through technology. With many business leaders searching for working solutions for their company’s inefficiencies, developers have created a set of new tools that work to integrate communication with productivity in new ways.

New collaboration solutions don’t just combine tools, they create complete environments where people can work together to complete a common goal from about anywhere. These new tools are a benefit to any organization whether your workers work side-by-side in an office or if they are separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. This is because solid collaboration tools can help your team build solid practices and relationships. This results in better outcomes.

The Collaboration App

Technically, there are only three types of collaboration software. They are:

Communication – VoIP, email, instant messaging keep people in contact and are relatively easy to use and cost efficient.
Conferencing – Video and audio conferencing takes the standard communication and makes it work for larger groups of people.
Coordination – In order to successfully collaborate with others, everyone needs access to the resources to complete the task/job/project. Having the ability to schedule people, send, receive, and store files, and control access to resources are extremely useful variables when working in a collaborative setting.

Today, there are apps that provide teams (and whole companies) the means to manage their work, communicate in multiple ways, and even integrate useful tools that will make work move that much faster. These collaboration tools are typically set up like a customizable forum, but each new forum feed has the ability to be a central hub to any particular project. Additionally, by allowing for all types of third-party application integrations, these apps build a completely customizable solution that can allow people to communicate through several different means, have the resources they need on hand, and provide the tools needed to build a culture that revolves around efficient teamwork.

If you would like to talk to one of our certified IT technicians about collaboration software that can change the way your business functions and gives you the tools your business requires to get where it wants to go, give NuTech Services a call today at 810.230.9455.

Mar, 2021

How VoIP Can Help the Business that Adopts It

For all the communication services and tools available to businesses nowadays, the telephone remains a staple in everyday processes—despite it often being difficult to manage and expensive to maintain. This is largely because today’s technology enables businesses to use a telephone system that exceeds the capabilities once provided by telephony, for a far more manageable investment.

Let’s take a few moments to explore how Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony is so useful to businesses.

A Quick Overview of VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol is a means of delivering a telephone system via the Internet, rather than investing in an additional, dedicated phone service. Available in different tiers, VoIP has proven reliable and responsive to change. This can largely be attributed to the use of cloud-based solutions to support these networks.

By using VoIP, a business can see quite a few perks come its way:

Simple management – With the option to host VoIP in-house or in a dedicated cloud server, it becomes much easier to make painless changes to the configuration of your solution.
Mobility – As VoIP uses the Internet as its data connection, it doesn’t need to be constrained to a stationary physical infrastructure. While a desktop phone can be made compatible with VoIP, a dedicated application on a mobile device can also be used.
Cost efficiency – By its very nature, VoIP enables a business to consolidate its operational expenses where communications are concerned. Rather than dedicating valuable dollars to yet another service, VoIP only requires an Internet connection to operate while offering many features you’d have to pay extra to a phone company for.
Business integrations – Many lines of business and office management applications have the capability to cooperate with VoIP services, helping to streamline daily processes.
Comprehensive features – As alluded to above, VoIP comes standard with many advanced call features and options for a business to take advantage of, like call waiting, call forwarding, conferencing capabilities, and instant messages.

NuTech Services is here to help you manage your business’ IT so that it can better fulfill your needs. Learn how we can help you take advantage of VoIP and other services by calling 810.230.9455 today.

Jan, 2021

How Not to Teach Your Team About Phishing, Courtesy of GoDaddy

GoDaddy—the domain registrar and web-hosting company once famed for its risqué advertisements—is facing some significant backlash for a much different reason. On December 14th, GoDaddy’s employees received an email that appeared to be from the company, promising a holiday bonus. However, while the email was from the company as it appeared to be, it was actually a phishing test that the hosting provider decided to run.

Let’s consider the situation:

GoDaddy’s Phishing Message:

When they checked their email on December 14th, GoDaddy’s employees found an email waiting for them in their inboxes, sent from “Happyholiday@Godaddy-dot-com”. Upon opening it, they found the following message, under a large picture of a snowflake emblazoned with the company’s name and “Holiday Party.” Get ready, it’s a doozy:

—

Happy Holiday GoDaddy!

2020 has been a record year for GoDaddy, thanks to you!

Though we cannot celebrate together during our annual Holiday Party, we want to show our appreciation and share a $650 one-time Holiday bonus! To ensure that you receive your one-time Bonus in time for the Holidays, please select your location and fill in the details by Friday, December 18th.

EMEA

Any submittals after the cutoff will not be accepted and you will not receive the one-time bonus of $650 (free money, claim it now!)

We look forward to celebrating with you again, in person next year!

—

However, no bonus reportedly awaited the approximately 500 employees who excitedly clicked through the links. Instead, they received an email from the company’s security chief two days later, informing them that they had failed the phishing test and would therefore need to retake the company’s Security Awareness Social Engineering training.

As you can imagine, this did not sit well for many of these employees… especially considering that the “record year” GoDaddy experienced came only after hundreds of employees were either reassigned or laid off entirely. Combining that with the fact that a data breach ultimately exposed 28,000 of GoDaddy customers’ credentials earlier this year, and the comments seem especially ill-advised.

GoDaddy has since released an apology for their mean-spirited bait-and-switch phishing test, releasing a statement. According to a spokesperson, “GoDaddy takes the security of our platform extremely seriously. We understand some employees were upset by the phishing attempt and felt it was insensitive, for which we have apologized.” While the company felt that the lesson was an important one to impart to their team members, there has been some acknowledgement that this was an insensitive means of doing so.

GoDaddy Isn’t the Only Company to Do This

Other companies and organizations have used similar tactics as they have worked to evaluate their internal phishing preparedness. One example came in September, when Tribune Publishing sent out a company email trying to phish employees with the promise of a targeted bonus ranging somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000. The Tribune’s attempt was also derided by the employees affected by it, one reporter tweeting that the level of cruelty was “stunning.” That company also apologized for its use of a “misleading and insensitive” email.

However, Phishing Can’t Just Be Ignored

While these companies certainly took the wrong approach to educating their users, the point still stands that phishing is a very serious risk for businesses today to contend with.

Instead of taking this approach, there are other ways to help educate your team, through seminars or even other internal evaluations. The primary issue really came from the fact that GoDaddy took advantage of a monetary promise to their employees during a time when many people are already financially strapped, with seemingly no intention of giving them this bonus.

Obviously, this is a situation that nobody wants to find their organization in, just as nobody wants their organization to be phished. However, with NuTech Services, there are ways to prevent the latter. Give our team a call at 810.230.9455 to learn more about how we can help you fight back against phishing, without alienating your employees.

Dec, 2020

Is 2021 the Year Your Business Embraces VoIP? (It Should Be)

Since its widespread adoption, the telephone has proved to be a hugely beneficial tool for businesses of all kinds… despite the considerable costs that it can incur. Fortunately for your business’ budget, however, there is a far more cost-effective means for you to enjoy the benefits of telephony: VoIP, short for Voice over Internet Protocol. Let’s go over some of the reasons why VoIP is just a better option for any business.

What is VoIP?

At first glance, VoIP is almost indistinguishable from the telephone services you are used to using—in fact, you’ve likely used it before.

Basically, instead of using the network of telephone wires that stretches from your service provider to your location, VoIP uses your broadband connection to transmit your call data to and from the recipient. In doing so, you eliminate the need for a pricy telephone service, instead getting double duty from your Internet.

Like we said, you’ve likely used VoIP technology in some form. Skype, Facetime, and Facebook Messenger all operate as VoIP solutions, albeit more for the personal user than an organization. For the organization, many VoIP platforms are available that provide a hefty list of features and options, leading to greater advantages.

The Advantages of Using VoIP in a Business Setting

The benefits of using VoIP are straightforward for the business:

Cost

This is perhaps the most visible (and, for that matter, impactful) benefits that Voice over Internet Protocol offers. A POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) requires a sizable investment for the infrastructure alone, never mind the additional features that aren’t included by default. Comparatively, VoIP needs very little up-front investment, and these additional features are almost always included.

Simplicity

VoIP is a perfect example of a plug-in-and-play solution, with very little else involved in its setup besides signing into your solution and literally plugging in the device. Similarly, starting up and operating the additional features incorporated into VoIP is a very user-friendly experience as well. This ease of use helps to motivate your team to use the platform’s conferencing capabilities and mobile-friendly softphone, and for your part, adding users is a simple enough task.

Function

Finally, these additional features further support your business’ capacity to communicate effectively. Here’s a general idea of what VoIP solutions will offer:

Call forwarding
Personalized extensions
Call routing
Call recording
Automated receptionist
Call queues
Instant messaging
Text messaging
Find me, follow me
Audio and video conferencing
Integrated voicemail
Line-of-business integration

Depending on the VoIP solution implemented, many more features will likely be available in addition to these.

In short, VoIP makes your business communications better, benefitting both your internal collaboration and your outreach efforts. Find out more about what VoIP can do, and what’s involved in implementing it, by calling our professionals at NuTech Services at 810.230.9455.

Dec, 2020

Tip of the Week: 5 Ways to Improve Mobile Business Etiquette

Mobility is important to today’s workers and can be valuable to many different types of businesses; so much so that businesses demand that employees stay connected. Sometimes, especially when in public, this can become a social problem. Today, we will discuss mobile phone etiquette and five ways that you can improve yours.

Business Doesn’t Stop, But You Should

We’ve all been there. We’re driving or on the train and a phone call comes in that you absolutely have to take. What do you do? Most people will take the call, but the right thing to do is send it to voicemail and return the call as soon as possible. Why? Because you are distracted. It’s best to call back and give the caller the attention they deserve rather than trying to juggle a phone call in the middle of traffic. Okay, this one is pretty basic, but it’s the foundation of all mobile etiquettes.

Don’t Be Rude

One of the biggest problems with mobile business is that there seems to be a continuous amount of communications that come in. This isn’t a problem when you are free to talk or text. It can be a problem if you are with other people, however. If you must take a phone call when you are face-to-face with others, be sure to excuse yourself and go at least ten feet away. This is courteous, and after all, it’s only four more feet than social distancing.

Brevity is often a cornerstone to modern mobile communication, with emails and texts often being short and sweet. Keep in mind though, sometimes being overly short can come across as disarming or even disrespectful to the recipient.

Stop Texting in Important Moments

One of the biggest faux pas that a mobile professional can have is the tendency to text people when other people demand their attention. If there is business going on right in front of you, even if it’s just a meal or an impromptu conversation, do yourself a favor and wait until it is over to return text messages. Again, pretty basic, but it doesn’t hurt to keep it top of mind.

Make Sure You Have Good Reception

This one is a serious problem. A lot of times when people are on the go, their service is not conducive to professional conversation. You can’t do business if calls keep getting dropped or texts don’t go through because you’ve chosen a poor place to conduct a mobile meeting; and nothing ruins your ability to communicate than if people have to stop every few minutes to get clarification or ask you to repeat yourself. Choose your location wisely.

Sometimes you can’t help it, we get it, but if you are planning on running a meeting and need to participate, try to be somewhere where the service is reliable. It’s a sign that you respect everyone else’s time. If it’s impossible to prevent, simply be forthcoming about it and let everyone know at the start of the call. Perhaps even give an option to resume the call later if things get too difficult for the other participants.

Return Calls as Soon as Possible

When you return phone calls soon after you miss them, it shows professionalism and respect for the caller. If you are going to be out of touch for a bit, whether it be for meetings or personal time, it is solid practice to change your voicemail to state when you won’t be available. Then, when you are available, be sure to reach back out. Nothing is worse than getting a voicemail stating that the person won’t be available two weeks ago.

The mobile device is one of the best business tools available for people today, but knowing how to use them professionally is extremely important. Have you had to deal with a vendor or client that doesn’t adhere to mobile best practices? Leave your stories in the comments section below and return to our blog for more great tips and tricks each week.

Nov, 2020

Why is VoIP Seen as Such a Great Business Solution?

Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is a common business communication solution nowadays… but it is still possible that you aren’t aware of what VoIP is and the many benefits it can deliver to your operations. To remedy this, let’s briefly review the concepts behind VoIP, and how your business can embrace them to its advantage.

What is VoIP, Anyways?

Voice over Internet Protocol is simply a different, more cost-effective means of transmitting voice data from one telephonic device to another. Rather than using a telephone provider’s infrastructure, a VoIP signal utilizes the Internet. This eliminates an entire line item from your expenses by rendering your telephone provider’s services redundant. This enables you to simultaneously save money while enjoying many often-included features that would otherwise have cost extra—assuming that they were even available with traditional telephony.

Is That the Only Reason I Should Use a VoIP Solution?

Absolutely not! VoIP can help you save time and money in other ways, as well:

With a history of being built upon open standards, VoIP solutions work on any device with sufficient specifications to support them—including mobile devices. This helps to minimize the investment you need to make to adopt VoIP, while simultaneously allowing you and your team to use your business telephone system remotely.
As VoIP operates through an Internet connection, the infrastructure to support it should already be in place within your business. As a result, it is likely that no costly renovations or additional wiring will be necessary, provided that your infrastructure is up to par.
Many businesses require costly Private Branch Exchange (PBX) equipment to properly utilize their internal phone network. VoIP eliminates the need for this expensive investment at all, also negating the need to maintain this equipment over time.
VoIP telephony generally doesn’t cost your business any extra for certain kinds of calls, like long distance calling—and if it does, it generally costs you much less than the telephone company would charge for it.
Unified communications are simpler to accomplish with VoIP, as many modern business solutions offer integrations with VoIP platforms. This makes communication easier to establish and track, which helps to keep the conversation moving forward efficiently.

All in all, utilizing VoIP as a part of your communications is not only a good strategy at the present, it is set to only show more promise as technologies—like artificial intelligence and 5G connectivity—continue to develop and improve.

NuTech Services can help you implement and maintain a VoIP solution that suits your business needs. To learn more, reach out to our team of experienced IT professionals by calling 810.230.9455.

Sep, 2020

Gmail Templates Can Speed Up Your Communications

Email is one of the most popular business communication tools, with Google’s Gmail service being a popular choice with a market share of around 33.7 percent. It therefore makes sense that a lot of time is spent using Gmail, time that you might like spent on other initiatives. To help reduce the amount of time spent in Gmail on routine correspondence, we’re sharing how you can use Gmail templates to get the job done.

There are multiple add-ons and browser extensions available to help boost your email templates with more dynamic options, but today, we’ll be focusing on the baked-in capabilities that Gmail comes with.

What is a Gmail Template?

A template is Gmail’s digitized version of a form letter—a stock piece of correspondence that doesn’t change much (if at all) each time it is sent. Naturally, by eliminating the time it takes to repeatedly re-type what is essentially the same message over and over, a template can make your more routine correspondences much more efficient.

As a result, you can spend more time on your more important tasks, without short-changing your communications.

Activating Gmail Templates

In Gmail, access your Settings by clicking on the gear-shaped icon. From there, select See All Settings, and then Advanced. On the page that appears, you should find an option for Templates. Enable it and Save Changes.

Now, you’ll have the capability to create whatever template you need for your usual correspondence.

Creating a Gmail Template

Generating a new template is very simple. All you must do is start a new email and write it out the way that your template should replicate. Once your template is written to your liking, click the message’s three-dot menu and navigate to the Templates option. In the sub-menu that appears, you can Save draft as template (which also gives you the option to overwrite your old templates if they need an update). The Templates sub-menu is also where you’ll find all the templates you have saved in the past, when you’re ready to use them, as well as the option to Delete template if one is no longer applicable.

Hopefully, this will help you make much faster use of Gmail in the future. To learn more time-saving technology tricks, make sure you subscribe to our blog!

Jun, 2020

Tip of the Week: How to Effectively Communicate with Your Clientbase

One of the most important things that your business needs to do—especially now—is to communicate with the clients you serve. To guide you into doing so to the best of your abilities, let’s go over some tips for you and your team to keep in mind pertaining to your communications.

1. Use the Best Tool for the Job

Your contacts should never find it difficult to reach you, so you need to make sure you’re providing them with plenty of options for them to make contact. Don’t pick between a phone number or an email address, give them both, along with a live chat feature, conferencing options, and other forms of communication. Making use of things like a blog and social media give you a great way to reach out to them first, starting the conversation.

With all of the options you can now give to your clients, they will feel much more confident about getting an answer to their questions and having their concerns addressed. They’re also apt to pay more attention to you as well.

2. Automate as You Communicate

Of course, in doing so, you may make it more challenging for you and your team members to keep the conversation going with your clients while also accomplishing what needs to be done each day. After all, if your whole day is spent answering questions on the phone, it’s going to be a little difficult to do anything else. Fortunately, there are solutions that you can use to better manage all these communications. Automated phone systems can keep your whole team from being interrupted as a client plays phone tag, while following up with emails and other communications can help minimize the questions that clients ultimately reach out with and simplify their experience.

3. Coordinate Your Team

For your business to provide a good experience for your customers and clients, your team all needs to work together as they deal with them to avoid repeating or contradicting messages. Improving your internal communications will only make your external communications stronger. Tools also exist to facilitate this, including instant messaging and customer relationship management (CRM) software.

For assistance in implementing this technology (and others), reach out to our team here at NuTech Services. We can discuss the tools that will suit your needs the most, as well as figure out how we can optimize them to your needs. To learn more, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

Apr, 2020

When Working Remotely, VoIP is an Indispensable Tool

With the widespread support of social distancing that current events have encouraged, remote working options are seeing an understandable surge in popularity. In order to make the most of “telecommuting,” as it is referred to, there are a lot of reasons to use a Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, solution. Let’s go over some.

To start, let’s consider the situation that we find ourselves in.

With COVID-19 still spreading, the general consensus is that spending time around other people is currently a bad thing, making the workplace a less-than-ideal environment in which to spend one’s time. As a result, many people have self-quarantined themselves in their homes. With today’s available technology, however, this does not mean that they cannot get work done, with the cloud offering great opportunities for collaboration and remote work. This plays into VoIP’s benefits quite nicely.

For instance…

VoIP Can Simplify the Remote Process

Consider what your team might require in order to complete their tasks while out of the office. They should have a workstation of some sort, naturally, whether that be a laptop that travels between their home and the office, or a desktop device set to securely access their work resources. However, another piece of equipment that is generally necessary for many employees is an office phone… something that was once a much less portable solution.

Today, VoIP can change that, by allowing you to use the phone through the Internet, not the traditional dedicated phone lines. This means that your employees can continue to make their typical business calls, without the need to be in the office. Using the same business number, an application on their workstation or mobile device can take or make calls (along with a wide variety of additional features) from anywhere that they can establish an Internet connection.

VoIP is a Secure Means of Communication

When your workforce has the opportunity (or, as we’re now experiencing, need) to work from home, they will still need to communicate with one another. However, many residential Internet services lack the inherent security that many business conversations will require. No matter how efficiently you want your business to operate, no productivity is worth sacrificing security for.

VoIP allows you to enjoy the best of both worlds. By combining the cloud-hosted nature of VoIP with the use of a virtual private network (VPN), you can be confident that any conversations held over the VoIP system are private and secure. This is handy, as your employees could find themselves having to share protected data over the phone with their teammates. A VPN will protect their conversations from being listened in on, as the connection will be distorted to any outside observers by the inherent encryption of the VPN.

VoIP Incorporates Other Forms of Collaboration

Namely, video conferencing. Many VoIP platforms offer some kind of video conferencing feature, permitting a face-to-face interaction between callers, regardless of the distance between them. A big concern that is common amongst remote workers is the feeling of isolation that can develop from working alone.

By using the conferencing capabilities that the right platform has to offer, your team can interact with each other in a more personal way. This reinforces the idea that they are a part of a team, keeping up their morale and encouraging them to work collaboratively to accomplish their shared goals.

To learn more about implementing a VoIP solution for your team’s use, reach out to the professionals at NuTech Services by calling 810.230.9455.

Jan, 2020

Options for Effective Business Communications

Today’s business is much more collaborative than it was in the past. This means that there are a lot more communications to manage. Small businesses may use technology to try and bridge the gaps and large businesses use it to manage huge and complicated workflows. Today, we take a look at the average business’ internal communications, and which tools are best for increased productivity.

Let’s start by examining the reasons for communications that businesses use to manage their internal processes.

Information sharing – There is plenty of news that needs to make its way around any business. There are many different forms of communication that can accomplish this.
Collaboration – Today’s business needs to use collaborative strategies more than businesses of the past, and communication is a big part of any collaborative endeavor.

Now, let’s consider a few solutions that can help you to accomplish solid information sharing and collaboration.

Information Sharing

When you think of internal communications at work, the lion’s share of it will fill this need. Employees need to know certain things to maintain continuity of a business. This includes the publication of policies, procedures, plans, or potential changes to each. To accommodate the sharing of all this knowledge, businesses use the following tools:

Email – Email is the most tried-and-true solution for internal business communications because it works on every level. It is available, familiar, and with today’s email platforms, features dynamic tools that can help anyone get their point across.
Newsletters – Some companies choose to roll out a company newsletter for their staff. In these newsletters there are spotlights on points of emphasis. If you choose the newsletter as the tool you want to broadcast your internal communications, however, it has to be understood.

Collaboration

Nowadays, collaboration is important for every business’ success. Business moves faster and if you don’t have some semblance of coordination between your employees in separate departments, it can cost more than time. It can be the difference between generating revenue and not. Here are some tools used to boost collaboration:

Productivity Suites – Today, there are a lot of collaboration-based applications out there. They are designed for specific business needs, but the most effective are the productivity suites like Google’s G Suite and Microsoft Office 365 because they give you the collaborative tools and shared storage that any team needs to be successful.
Chat Applications and Forums – Instant messaging apps have improved collaborations tenfold. Forums have been useful since the early days of the Internet. Today, developers have created apps that combine the two and offer hundreds of outside software integrations to help promote collaboration.

The IT professionals at NuTech Services have the expertise and access to solutions to help you solve any of your business’ operational problems. Call us today at 810.230.9455 to learn more.

Jul, 2019

Five Reasons Video Conferencing is a Great Business Tool

Many businesses have turned to video conferencing as a promising communications solution for their workforces to leverage, and for good reason. There are assorted collaborative benefits that a company can enjoy by embracing video conferencing capabilities. Here, we’ll review five of them.

Team Building Benefits

Many modern businesses have employees who don’t always work in the office, instead electing to operate remotely. However, it is important that these employees are still assimilated as a part of your team as a whole. A conferencing solution can allow you to keep your remote employees on the same page as your on-site employees, building camaraderie between coworkers despite any distance between them. The better your team is able to collaborate, the more effective they will be able to be in accomplishing their tasks, as they will have each other as a resource to lean on as needed.

Keep Your Team On-Task

Let’s face it, it can sometimes be hard to be sure that your employees are focused on the task at hand. This is especially true when you can only hear their voice, or see the responses they send back to you. A conferencing solution fixes this difficulty by giving you and your team a visual of each other, keeping everyone involved accountable and engaged.

Increase Your Collaborative Footprint

It wasn’t all that long ago that collaborating with someone a distance away was only possible over the phone or by physically traveling to meet with them. However, collaborative conferencing solutions have taken this distance and shrank it down to effectively nothing. Like the team building benefits we discussed earlier, your team is no longer restricted to one place, or to dealing with exclusively local coworkers, partners, and other resources.

Promote “Face-to-Face” Communication

A sizable portion of communication is non-verbal, which means that your solution needs to account for this balance. More traditional solutions didn’t take this into consideration – or rather, couldn’t. Modern collaboration solutions, on the other hand, allow you to communicate more completely by allowing you to witness these non-verbal cues.

Conferencing Can Simplify Your Solution Set

Compared to legacy solutions, modern conferencing tools offer a much more comprehensive selection of features. As a result, you can reduce the number of solutions that your operations rely upon, cutting expenses and streamlining your processes. This makes it much easier to find success in communicating with your team, without sinking all of your capital into your solutions.

NuTech Services can assist you in establishing the collaboration solution that fits your needs, as well as any other IT implementation your business requires. Learn more by calling 810.230.9455.

Jul, 2019

Tip of the Week: How to Use Instant Messaging Professionally

Communication is paramount in any business environment, which makes it crucial that your business is equipped with the tools that allow this communication to take place. In light of this, many businesses have embraced instant messaging applications in the workplace. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over how to most productively and professionally utilize instant messaging.

Why Effective Communications are So Critical

There are a few reasons that you want your business’ internal communications to be clear and effective.

Fewer Errors

Miscommunication is rarely a good thing, but in the business setting, it has the potential to be crippling to your operations. If the correct information isn’t shared at the right time, with the right people, productivity will suffer. On the other hand, proper communications can help minimize, or even avoid, many potential workplace errors.

Increased Accountability

When an organization keeps its communications open across the board, it is prone to see an associated increase in companywide accountability. From owner to intern, being responsible for (and being held responsible for) certain milestones in a process keeps each member of a team on-task and motivated.

Improved Teamwork

Naturally, when members of a team communicate properly, they are better able to work cooperatively. As a result, problems often become easier to solve, as ideas may more easily flow and develop. Additionally, potential issues between departments are more easily resolved, preventing interpersonal concerns from affecting the work.

Efficient Problem-Solving

The ability to communicate clearly enables a team to better pool their talents to much more efficiently overcome any issues that may arise. Whether a problem is strategic or technical, having the capability to swiftly solve it will only benefit a business’ operations.

Instant Messaging in the Workplace

Naturally, all of the above outcomes can (and often do) result from the use of an instant messaging application… as long as it’s the right one.

You need to make sure that your chosen solution is intended for business purposes, which means you need to use an enterprise-grade instant messaging application. In addition, you also need to be sure that you and your staff are properly leveraging your solution. Try to encourage the following practices and behaviors in your staff to ensure that your instant messaging solution doesn’t turn into an instant messaging problem:

Keep it in check. You don’t want a solution that is meant to be a productivity booster to actually harm it. There’s a very real difference between your staff properly leveraging instant messaging capabilities, and aimlessly chatting all day. Encourage your staff to keep their conversations pertinent to the workplace and the task at hand (at least as much as possible).
Remain professional. Again, conversations on your instant message solution should be far and away focused on workplace matters. It is important that your staff knows this, and resists using the solution to share jokes, GIFs, or memes excessively. Moderation is key.
Don’t rely too much on it. Not all conversations are appropriate for an instant messaging platform, especially those that contain sensitive or overly complicated details. Some conversations are better shared in person, or in an email, where lengthier messages can be sent.

Have you ever utilized instant messaging in the workplace? Share your experience with us in the comments!

Apr, 2019

Tip of the Week: How to Encourage a Good Team Dynamic

Collaboration is an invaluable part of any modern business’ success, which means that teamwork is an essential skill for your staff to have. Unfortunately, teamwork isn’t always the easiest thing to achieve in the office. There are, however, ways that you can promote it among your workforce. For this week’s tip, we’ll discuss a few ways how.

Method One: Clarify Roles

One of the first things that you should do is to ensure that everyone knows exactly what their role is with no misunderstandings. This will assist in establishing processes in which certain team members have a clear sense of what they are responsible for, and how that ties into the larger goal.

There are a few direct benefits that this transparency with your team can bring. First, you can give your team ample feedback into their performance and assign them new challenges and objectives to accomplish. Secondly, you can empower your team members to approach these objectives – all benefitting the same end goal – in their own way. By giving them this power over their own process, you encourage them to take ownership over their work and the end result.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather produce something good if my name was going to be associated with it, if my contributions could be traced back to me.

Method Two: Praise the Team

One of the biggest obstacles to true teamwork is the ego. To avoid creating interpersonal tensions amongst your team through your praise, try praising the team as a unit. While giving one member of your team the spotlight can easily make the other members more jealous than anything else, focusing that spotlight on the team as a whole will help to improve the collaborative efforts of the team. You can always praise that team member in a one-on-one conversation.

There is one caveat to this: while you shouldn’t single out a team member in public, you should make sure that all work done within the team remains transparent. This visibility will help to discourage team members from slacking off and piggybacking on their coworkers, keeping everyone accountable for their share of the work.

Method Three: Encourage Staff Socialization

In order for your workforce to act as a team, they will need to see themselves as a team. This can be accomplished in a few ways.

The real key is to ensure that your staff is frequently spending time as a group.

In an operational sense, team meetings can be invaluable, so long as they also remain productive. Not only can these meetings provide your team with valuable facetime with one another, you can focus on your business’ strategy by analyzing your staff’s status reports side-by-side.

On the more casual side of things, there are a few ways that you can draw your employees closer together. Social activities can help to build camaraderie and friendly relationships. While it might seem corny, ice breakers can be a good way to get your team to open up to one another and, well, break the ice between coworkers. Otherwise, lunches or an after-work meetup for happy hour can help your team see each other as something other than just coworkers, but as friends. Even if nobody finds their “best friend forever”, your team will at least know each other better, allowing them to work together more effectively.

Method Four: Leverage Technology

Finally, if your team is going to act like a team, they’re going to need the tools that enable them to do so. This is what makes collaboration solutions so critical to the modern business. With the right solutions, your team can work cooperatively regardless of where they are, sharing and editing files together.

Of course, not every team member will need to see the same documents, based on their role, which is where the capability to assign network and file access permissions come into play. With these permissions, you can ensure that each team member can locate and access the files they need to be productive and contribute to the greater goals of the group.

NuTech Services can help you implement these technologies to support your other team-building endeavors – as well as the success of your business as a whole. To learn what else we have to offer, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

Dec, 2018

Know Your Tech: PDF

For computer enthusiasts one of the major questions has always been Mac vs. PC. Most people prefer one over the other, while some are fine using either. The problem with having two popular non-compatible computer systems is that they each use proprietary file types. For documents, the answer was developed by Adobe: the PDF. Today, we’ll take a look at Portable Document Format.

The Development of the PDF
The PDF is best known for promoting the sharing of information as it was created. A PDF looks the same whether it is in digital format or if it is printed to paper, no matter what OS is being used. Before this format was created, sharing information between the two was extremely difficult, but in 1990, Adobe co-founder John Warnock wrote a paper titled A Camelot Project, in which he described the limitations of sharing information. He would go on to found Team Camelot, the group of software developers that created the PDF, a file that can be universally shared across all computing platforms.

At first, however, it held very little utility as users had to purchase Adobe Acrobat in order to use the file type. Team Camelot, however, built additional functionality as the Internet got more popular, and as its utility increased, it was eventually adopted by the International Organization for Standardization and opened up to the masses.

Advantages of the PDF
Nowadays, there are multiple types of PDFs, and their utility is tied to their makeup. The types are as follows:

Digitally Created PDFs – PDF files created in a digital environment, whatever that environment might be (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, etc.). These PDFs are fully customizable and editable.
Scanned PDFs – A Scanned PDF is effectively an image of a document. They are not inherently customizable, but there is software that can be utilized to change that.
Searchable PDFs – Thanks to Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software adding an editable text layer to an image layer, a PDF becomes searchable. This process enables greater interaction with PDFs like this. In a document management system, many document scanners come with the kind of software users need to convert a scanned PDF into a searchable PDF. As such, it is a core component of a paperless office.

PDFs have shown to be extraordinarily useful for businesses. They are convenient to use, universally compatible, and can be extremely secure.

For more great technology information, return to our blog regularly.

Sep, 2018

Getting a Better Sense of Customer Relationship Management

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how important it is to have a handle on your clients’ needs. After all, how else are you supposed to offer them the level of service that they need to remain satisfied enough to stay subscribed to what you offer? This endeavor is exactly why a customer relationship management (or CRM) system is so crucial.

What is Customer Relationship Management?
Customer relationship management is effectively how a company can gauge and improve their interactions with their clients, gradually coaxing them toward repeated business transactions. By compiling data from the many points of contact that a prospect or repeat customer has with a business, that business can build a profile that will help inform their next steps.

With data able to be drawn from website and social media activity, live chat and telephone conversations, and a customer’s purchase history, CRM software can heavily assist you by constructing a database of customer information. Some can even automate certain processes, assisting a company’s marketing and sales forces in more effectively communicating with customers from a more informed standpoint, or allowing labor to be saved by leading an incoming caller through a precomposed voice menu to direct them to whom they need to reach.

A CRM can also be used to optimize internal tasks, like the managerial responsibilities of Human Resources, processing analytics, and automating certain workflows. Some CRM solutions have even begun to incorporate artificial intelligence to better predict a customer’s trajectory.

Customer relationship management systems can be hosted on-premise or delivered over the Internet as a cloud-based solution.

Putting a CRM to Use
A CRM can be leveraged in any number of ways for your business to embrace. Social media engagement can be monitored to identify which platform is most used by an audience, monitoring keywords and brand mentions. Otherwise, it can be used to assist in addressing feedback over social media.

Speaking of feedback, a CRM system can also be of use in a business’ contact center, collecting data from service calls to inform a company’s sales and marketing efforts, as we mentioned above. This is especially useful in a business-to-business application, as it can help to optimize a business’ journey through the sales and marketing funnel.

If a CRM system sounds like something that your company should implement, reach out to NuTech Services by calling 810.230.9455.