The value of persistent chat in today's standard practices

November 21, 2024

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Today, we cannot imagine our lives or workflows without instant messaging, which we use for private and corporate communication. For many people, such communication and collaboration replaced emails and became an integral part of their workflow.

Lots of companies use persistent chat solutions not only for internal communication and collaboration but also to store documents, and media files, organize webinars, meetings, group chats, or customer support channels. Such instant messaging apps for permanent chats are installed on all mobile devices and are used daily for private communication. Not all of them guarantee data security and privacy, but you can select the right persistent chat solution for your corporate communication. This blog post will share some ideas about persistent chats. However, first of all, let's see why persistent chats are so popular today:

• They are convenient for real-time collaboration
• They give the ability to create topic-based channels
• They provide a great variety of collaboration tools
• They significantly facilitate communication and collaboration for remote and distributed teams
• They make it possible to store information and make searches in chat history
• They support video conferencing
• They provide tools for remote troubleshooting
• They allow revisiting important information on the fly

How do organizations use persistent chat solutions for their business needs?

To answer this question, we first need to define cases of persistent chat solutions usage:

Internal corporate communication and collaboration

While most persistent chat solutions offer a wide range of communication features, a few provide the right tools for collaboration. For example, Virola corporate messenger, apart from the ability to exchange text messages and make calls, supports the following functionality, which enhances cooperation:

• Video and audio conferencing
• File sharing
• Task board and issues tracking
• Topic-based channels
• Message formats, such as markdown LaTeX, HTML, and Code
• Deep links
• Unlimited chat history and attachments storage
• Flexible search options
• Customizable user permissions

Employees just need to log into the Virola client app to access their group and private chats, start addressing issues, look for needed information, and participate in video or audio conferences.

Apart from convenience and efficiency, corporate messengers which offer persistent chat solutions together with other collaboration tools such as video and audio conferencing, issues tracking and screen sharing significantly increase the security level of data exchange. Instead of using different tools for collaboration, employees can have everything in one corporate messenger app.

News channels

If you need to deliver information on a daily basis to large groups of people, you should use persistent chat solutions for this purpose as this is the fastest and most convenient way to achieve your goal. With Virola corporate messenger you can do the following:

• Create news channels with limited user permissions
• Provide registration links to users
• Clone group chat rooms with all their participants
• Easily add or remove users from chat rooms
• Automatically add new users to specific news channels

Customer service

Permanent chat solutions allow providing personalized customer service and are great for solving complicated issues and troubleshooting. With Virola corporate messenger you can easily offer personalized customer service and let your customers contact your customer service team directly. You can do this either in private chats with your customers or create a community of users where they will ask their questions. To start assisting customers in Virola you need to:

• Create customer support channels with limited user permissions
• Provide your customers with self-registration links and links to group chats where your team members will assist them

Your customers will be able to join your group chats via links and you will be able to assist them. In case you would like to assist customers in private chats, you can provide them their credentials and create a private chat room with that user from your side. After logging into Virola client app your customers will join a private chat room and will be able to ask questions right away.

Training

Persistent chat solutions are great for training your remote employees. In Virola corporate messenger you can take advantage of the following features:

• Screen sharing and remote control
• Video and audio conferencing
• Documents, screenshots and video sharing
• Playing video files and viewing images directly in the Virola client app
• Creating tasks and monitoring progress

Online conferences

Various permanent chat solutions offer video conferences or integration with third-party software. With Virola corporate messenger users in a group can start video or audio chats with a click. Meetings recording is available and can be restricted for certain users if necessary.

Data storage and exchange

Secure data storage is important for many companies. While using persistent chats files are uploaded and shared among chat room participants or in private chat rooms. However, cloud corporate messengers limit the amount of data storage and thus important information can be lost.

Virola self-hosted messenger allows storing files and attachments for an unlimited period. When necessary, chat room moderators can clear chat history and attachments in specific chat rooms.