An event day is guaranteed to be exhilarating yet potentially stressful. The success or failure of the day is, in part, determined by clear communication between departments. Efforts need to be streamlined before and during the event, or you can bet that things won’t go as planned. In the long run, poor communication isn’t just bad for your guests but also for your bottom line.
You can beat the stress by creating clear lines of communication for staff members who do everything on the go. Learn about the potential effects of disjointed communication, the power provided by mobile apps, and what to look for in a mobile communications app when you’re ready to implement software.
What Is a Mobile Communications App?
A mobile communications app is a powerful mobile application built to help facility management put the visitor experience first. This application is most often available for iOS and Android, depending on the software provider.
As a member of the facility management team, you can’t wait for issues to arise to think of a solution. Instead, you need to instill proactivity into your operations by putting the right solutions in place first.
A mobile communicator serves as a key component in proactive operations by:
Enabling Users to Report Incidents
This is the No. 1 benefit of a mobile communications app. Incidents at venues, such as stadiums, happen all the time. From unruly attendees to injuries caused by foul balls, incidents that arise require your staff to quickly fill out forms, input necessary information, add requests and tasks, and manage everything whenever and from wherever—not just at a desk.
Resolving Issues Quickly
Fast communication between staff, other departments, and guests is the first step in resolving issues quickly. When guests and staff have access to a mobile app, reports go directly to your facility’s dispatch queue and the proper staff member.
Breaking Down Communication Barriers
Because the tool works on the go, a mobile communications app connects through Wi-Fi or an existing cellular data network and enables you to efficiently deliver real-time information to your team. Users can access the platform whenever and wherever by accessing the data and recording information while they are offline.
The Negative Effects of Disjointed Communication
You’re looking for ways to improve communication across your facility management and staff, which means you’ve probably experienced the effects of disjointed communication with your teams.
Bad communication often:
Creates Employee Conflict
When teams aren’t speaking with one another, it’s impossible to be on the same page, work collaboratively, or communicate effectively. Additionally, siloed communication can cause frustration among team members. It can foster personal agendas to take over and create conflict, making clear communication even more difficult to achieve.
Leads to Time Prioritized in the Wrong Places
When communication is bad, it’s unlikely that your employees are sharing important information with each other. Instead, they’re focusing on areas they think should be prioritized.
Loosens Communication Protocols
A lack of communication doesn’t just affect employee relationships—it can also negatively affect your communication protocols. Documenting crucial details and processes is as important as tracking occurrences on your property. And when these procedures for interdepartmental communication aren’t met, the foundation of your protocols begins to break apart.
Puts Staff Members in Places They Shouldn’t Be
The size of your venue requires your teams to be spaced out to take care of their tasks. But poor communication can force your teams into a “maze” as they try to track down one another. That’s why it’s necessary that they have a way of communicating quickly and on the go.
5 Ways a Facility Management Mobile Application Improves Communication
The benefits of good communication between facility management and staff don’t just stay within the team—those benefits expand into other areas of your operations, including guest satisfaction and overall operational efficiency.
Here’s exactly how the use of a mobile application will benefit many aspects of your operation:
1. Enhance Procedural Information
We’ve been really hammering home the importance of streamlined, always-available communication between your departments. But this goes beyond simply staying “in the know.”
Procedural information can change daily, weekly, or monthly. As soon as it does change, these changes need to be made known to the important players immediately. Mobile communication delivers vital information, and as a result, your team members can execute their tasks while you get the benefit of knowing everything is running smoothly.
2. Promotes Goodwill Between Departments
People aren’t just worker bees. Even in a work environment, people seek human connection in their working relationships, which makes goodwill between team members a necessity, not a perk.
Outside of team building exercises, goodwill can be gained when employees managing departments promote clear lines of communication. This can significantly improve camaraderie within teams while also ensuring the operation runs efficiently.
3. Employs Specific Processes for Effective Communication
Your departments need outlined steps for when and how information flows between them before, during, and after events. A mobile communication app provides this perk. This minimizes ambiguous procedures and makes sure everything’s in black and white, which creates accountability across departments.
4. Increases Operational Efficiency
You might not yet see the connection between consistent communication and operational efficiency, but mobile communication software works in conjunction with incident management software.
If a guest reports something like a broken cup holder through a text message, that report goes into the incident management software. With just one click of a button, a work order is generated, allowing the right staff member to address the task. See how simple that workflow can be?
5. Increases Guest Satisfaction
Remember, at the end of the day, your No. 1 priority is the guest experience. When you take the time to implement the right software, your team is in good communication, workflows are efficient, and incidents are being taken care of quickly. Your guests will notice the results.
What to Look for in a Mobile Communication App
Mobile communication apps have exploded in popularity among businesses over the past several years (especially in the sports arena industry). This is great news, but it also means that you have many options to choose from and need to know what to look for before you make a decision.
As you begin to look into different mobile communications apps, be sure that they provide the following features that emphasize fast communication, robust analytics, and more:
- Direct two-way communication: This feature arms your frontline staff with the easiest, most efficient way to report incidents and document all relevant information.
- Real-time updates: Enable your team in the field to update information on the status of incidents, requests, tasks, or changes to activities in real time.
- Mass communication and updates: With pre-programmed templates that can be specified to each receiving device, send out critical notifications and alerts. Be sure you can have the ability to customize alerts and messages for different departments, teams, and individuals so that they can stay informed at the most important times.
- Easy multimedia uploading: Sometimes a photo or a video speaks louder and faster than words. Be sure your communicator app can send different media to those who need to be notified.
- An icon-based interface for easy use: Customization features can help your team better align with incidents and messages that are most relevant to your operations. Be sure that you can customize the look and feel of the platform by assigning icons to incident or request types so that anything can be reported in seconds.
- Offline work capabilities so you never lose data with a lost connection: Your mobile solutions need to work at all times, even in an offline environment. This includes saving all data to the cloud, so it will automatically sync with the platform as soon as the user is back online.
- A dispatch queue viewable from anywhere: Your supervisor or managers need to see incident statuses and requests at all times and from any device. With the right software, you can add users easily to ensure those who need it have a bird’s eye view of your operations.
- A request tracker for improved customer service: Organization is No. 1 when it comes to tracking requests. Although every guest should be responded to immediately, your requests need to be organized in a way that sorts high- and low-priority incidents.
- Integration capabilities with other technologies: All attendees need to be able to contact the right person at the right time, which means your communication platform should provide access through other apps such as WhatsApp, a cross-platform messaging app with more than a billion users worldwide.
Get Mobile Communication for Facility Management from 24/7 Software
Don’t let the excitement of your event day get squashed by the stress of poor communication among your departments. By implementing 24/7 Software’s Incident Management Software, you can streamline communications through mobile devices that ultimately optimize your operations, keep your guests happy, and increase your bottom line.
Our software includes all of the features we’ve mentioned above, but we don’t expect you to believe it until you see it. Request a demo today to experience it in action!
