From multi-location businesses to hybrid workforces, today’s corporate marketing teams are managing far-flung brand representatives who are working from their own branches or home offices to create and distribute localized marketing campaigns and customer communications to their own unique audiences. Given the “multiple cooks in the kitchen” scenarios, not to mention the rapidly changing nature of corporate messaging, it can be all but impossible to ensure every brand representative is on the same page in terms of the way they’re communicating to customers. When everyone has access to different versions of corporate updates and branding, customers start to see mixed messaging and lose faith in the brand.
The solution? A centralized communication hub that keeps the latest updates and collateral at every representative’s fingertips, making it easy to communicate with local customers in a way that preserves every inch of brand integrity.
Here are five ways the right communication hub can keep disparate marketing teams in sync:
Access to the Latest Information
Businesses today need an efficient, effective way to ensure brand representatives have the information they need to know to do their jobs — and to keep customers informed. The most successful strategy is to adopt a “command center” of sorts—a centralized communication hub that is accessible anytime, anywhere employees are located, that keeps every policy change, messaging update, and brand detail organized and at users’ fingertips.
Think of it as the digital incarnation of an old-school bulletin board that provides employees with the details they need to know, when they need them—along with any assets they’ll need to quickly and accurately pass the message on to customers and the community.
Seamless Customer Experience
Keeping all this information front and center for employees empowers brands to maintain a seamless customer experience. We know customers expect personalized, consistent, multichannel communication from the brands they love, and in times of crisis, they’re especially attuned to communication from those companies to offer a little certainty and stability about what’s available to them, and how.
But internal teams can only provide that clarity for customers if they get clarity for themselves, first. Once they do, they can customize and localize the pre-approved messaging, print or order brochures, flyers, and signage, and create website and social media updates to pass what they know on to their communities.
Giving employees easy access to the latest and greatest empowers businesses to continue providing value to customers no matter what else is happening in the world. That starts with a centralized communication hub.
Hybrid Work Centralized Hub
While hybrid and fully remote work undoubtedly have their advantages (we embrace remote work here at OneTouchPoint!), these “work from anywhere” models also come with their own set of challenges. Primarily, the relative isolation of remote work can lead to gaps, inefficiencies, and the occasional complete breakdowns of communication that make it more difficult for teams and their leaders to get their work done efficiently and stay on the same page about policy changes or evolving priorities.
Fortunately, the solution to many of those communication challenges can be found in a digital asset manager or, as we like to call it, a centralized communication hub. This hub is accessible anytime, from anywhere employees are located, and it keeps communication and updates organized and at users’ fingertips.
Break Open Silos
When teams work in silos, it’s easy to duplicate work—wasting time and resources that could’ve been spent on far more valuable endeavors. And when employees are working remotely or in different sales territories, those silos can become more and more difficult to break open. (That’s how you end up with two marketing teams creating assets for complementary campaigns—and worse, paying graphic designers to duplicate the same task!) But that’s where that centralized communication hub comes in. When departments have a single, accessible place to share the work they’re doing and grab the assets corporate has already created for them, that added visibility enables teams across the organization to take advantage of the legwork that’s already been done.
Enhanced Security
When marketers are sending content and assets to their teams on an ad-hoc basis via email, Slack, text message, Teams, and countless other channels, it can be all too easy to inadvertently send the wrong thing to the wrong person, breaching internal security clearances, making private customer information public, or simply clogging up a colleague’s inbox unnecessarily. (And when you throw compliant messaging in the mix, risking legal-approved drafts getting lost, you raise the stakes even further.)
The right central communication hub, however, helps tighten security by taking outdated content out of the mix and introducing customized permissions for every team or level, sharing and editing histories, and even expiration dates. Just be sure to look for a partner that can keep data secure through SOC2 and GDPR compliance, HITRUST certification and, for healthcare companies, HIPAA/PHI compliance, too.
Boosted Productivity
Be honest: how many times a week do you find yourself wasting time sifting through folders of PDFs searching for the latest flier? Or chasing down managers for approvals on urgent customer-facing assets? Or revising policy-related content based on memory because the approved language was too hard to find?
Imagine what else you could accomplish if you could just get that time back. That communication hub can make it happen by keeping the latest—and only the latest—assets and information meticulously organized and easily accessible, 24/7. Even more, the right platform can automate approval workflows, replacing endless back-and-forth feedback and follow up loops with in-hub management to streamline processes and get you that time back.
Get Started with U.Connect Centralize Communication Hub
These are just a few of the ways a centralized communication hub can make collaboration and productivity easier for companies that have embraced remote and hybrid work. OneTouchPoint’s U.Connect platform is a powerful internal tool to keep brand representatives up to date with the latest information, updates, and assets they need to streamline their work, increase their productivity, and provide a consistently excellent customer experience. Keeping location managers, sales representatives, affiliates, and other internal stakeholders up to speed on changes — and providing with them access to the latest approved messaging and collateral — ensures that internal teams can keep customers and potential customers in the know. If your marketing team is ready to empower your employees and safe-guard your carefully curated brand through the use of a centralized communication hub, contact us to learn more.